


The Devil

by Canaan



Series: Major Arcana [10]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Action/Adventure, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-26
Updated: 2010-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:39:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose is missing, Jack can't sleep, Mickey has amnesia, and the Doctor doesn't know how to queue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> SSA auction fic for and the Shadow Proclamation! Part of my Major Arcana series, in which the ninth Doctor did not regenerate and is still traveling with Rose and immortal!Jack. "The Devil" falls right after "Judgement" . . . which I haven't written yet, sorry. What you need to know is: "Judgement" is the "how Rose told her mum she was sleeping with two blokes" story, and at the end of it, Mickey Smith ended up traveling in the TARDIS with them. BR goodness from Aibhinn, Yamx, and Robin C. The remaining mistakes are All Mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

Kamil was usually proud of his nephew's children. Zaida and Imran had grown into fine adults. They were pious, but not over-zealous in it. They were industrious, and the estate their father left to them prospered because of it. They strove to better their world, they provided for those of their family who could not take care of themselves, and they extended their charity to others, as was admirable and proper. They had their flaws--Kamil knew some of them only too well. But no one was perfect, and Zaida and Imran generally made a good showing.

Out of respect for them, and because they provided and cared for him and their mother and the others as their father did before them, Kamil took the smooth functioning of the harem upon himself years ago. It was his home: It pleased him when it was a pleasant and amiable environment. He might be a poet and a dreamer, but he was also old, and the years had given him an understanding of people and their tempers, joys, and needs that helped him sort many of the day-to-day frictions that happened within families.

Today found him sitting at the bedside of a half-conscious young woman. She'd been moaning like she was sick for hours, and bruises colored her cheek and wrapped around her left wrist. The household physician had her brought up to the harem on a pallet. He had assured Kamil the sickness was a drug of some kind. The poor child had been wandering the streets with no identifying chip on her, and her gencode wasn't on file, which meant she came from one of the poorer quarters. One of the household servants had come across her and brought her in. If she had no family to care for her, Kamil was sure she would stay on. A place could always be found somewhere, and Zaida had a good eye for pretty companions, both for herself and for her brother.

Suddenly, the moaning stopped. Kamil looked down at the young woman. She blinked several times and tried to sit up. "Let me help," Kamil said gently. He tucked an arm behind her, careful not to pull those strands of long, blonde hair in the process. Once he was sure she had her balance, he poured a cup of water from the pitcher on the low table beside the bed. When he offered it, she hesitated. Understandable, if she'd been drugged. Kamil took a deep drink from the cup and offered it again.

She took it, sniffed at it, and then drank it dry. "Thank you," she said, her voice rough with the effects of the drug. "May I have some more? I can see th' pitcher, but my balance is kind of funny."

Kamil took the cup back. "Of course. You've been unconscious for several hours. Do you remember how you came here?" he asked as he filled the cup.

She started to shake her head, pulled a face, and said, "No. Last thing I remember, I was . . . " She trailed off with an anxious look. The look stayed where it was as she drank the second cup of water. "I don't remember. I should remember, and there's just nothing there."

Kamil could see the panic rising in her eyes, and her hand trembled where she held the empty cup. He took it from her and drew her into a hug, letting her shake in his arms. "Shh. It's all right. You were found drugged. It may come back, or it may not, but either way, you're safe now."

She shook her head, swayed a little, and moaned. "I have to find out how I got here. The Doctor an' Jack'll be lookin' for me." She winced. "If they're even on this planet."

Kamil ignored the nonsense words, patting her back. It might take some time for the drug's effects to wear off. "My name's Kamil, and you're in the household of Greater Glory. Don't worry--you're safe now."

"'m Rose," she said. "Rose Tyler."


	2. chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the fabulous Aibhinn, Yamx, and Robin C.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

"Shopping," Jack suggested. "Got distracted."

The Doctor shook his head. "Mickey's got less patience for that than _we_ do. Besides, the milk'd spoil. Arrested."

Jack considered the street alongside them. Their table sat outside a tea house where Rose and Mickey were meant to meet them for a late lunch before they went to the afternoon matinee of something the Doctor described as a cross between a dance and a circus. The tea house was quietly doing a brisk mid-day trade. The passersby and the other customers were clean and well-dressed. There was very little litter on the sidewalk and no exhaust in the air, and trolleys ran by regularly. "Maybe, but in a place like this, an arrest would've caused such a ruckus, the story'd be all over the streets with the blinding speed of gossip. Mickey met a girl."

"Rose'd be here by now. With the tale to tell." The Doctor countered, "They took the groceries back to the TARDIS and went sight-seein'. Plenty of sights worth seein' in Tuleeq's capital. They lost track of time."

"Mickey? Miss lunch?" Jack asked.

The Doctor made a rude noise and dragged his eyes off the traffic in the street to look at Jack. "You don't like him," he said.

Jack blinked. "This from the man who referred to him as 'the idiot' for months before I met him? I like him fine."

"He's not a complete idiot," the Doctor admitted, grudgingly. He sipped his tea. "And you yell at him."

"He's just . . . scattered. Nothing wrong with him a good sergeant couldn't fix." Someone to tell him when to breathe, where to stand, and when to run would do Mickey Smith a world of good. He wasn't a bad kid, but when everything went pear-shaped around the Doctor, you needed to be able to take orders or give them--not just stand there and dither. _Not a bad kid_ , Jack thought, uncomfortably. _And how much older than Rose is he?_

The Doctor snorted his amusement. Another trolley rumbled by.

"Think it's worth checking back at the TARDIS?" Jack asked.

The Doctor shook his head. "Not a chance. Not our Rose. Don't suppose she had her mobile on her, either."

Jack laughed and finished his coffee, watching a trio of young women walk by, whispering and looking at the pair of them. When he winked, they looked away, cutely embarrassed. "Not after the last time it buzzed while we were out exploring. The look you gave it should've melted plastic." He frowned. "Mickey might have his, though." He flipped open his wristcomp and had it call Mickey's primitive mobile. After a minute, he gave up. "No answer, but we can track 'em by it."

The Doctor finished his tea and stood. "You'd think so, wouldn't you, Captain?"

***

  
"I was really with Rose?" Mickey asked for the third time. He knew it was the third time. He knew that the Doctor thought he was an idiot and he was driving Captain Jack around the bend, but he couldn't get his head around it. There was half a day gone that he didn't remember. How were you meant to really think about that, especially when your head was throbbing like a flat over a dance club? "Why wasn't she with you?"

The Doctor ignored him and stopped at a fruit stall, its low walls constructed of brightly-colored cloth on a lightweight frame. "Excuse me, we're looking for a blonde woman, about this tall, dark eye makeup, blue jacket. We got separated. I don't suppose you've seen her?"

The shopkeeper, a middle-aged man wearing somber, rust-colored trousers and a long shirt, looked taken aback by the Doctor's brisk question. "No, sir. Have you checked the central data grid? If she's looking for you, too, that's the best place for her to have left a message."

Central data grid? Future, then, or at least, future to when Mickey was from. The Doctor was already moving on. "Thanks, mate," Mickey told the shop-keeper. "We'll do that."

The open-air market was pleasant, and not too full at this time of day. If it weren't for the headache and the persistent feeling that the ground might go sideways under him, Mickey thought he'd enjoy the little stalls and shops with their wares set out on colorful displays. Jack told him, "You were going to help Rose carry groceries back while we were looking for some parts."

Mickey waited for that to make sense. They were on a planet; he'd got that part, but he didn't remember anything being wrong with the TARDIS. Well, not any more wrong than usual. "We came here for parts?"

"We came here for falafel," the Doctor said. Ol' Big-Ears looked distracted. Not that Mickey could blame him, with Rose missing. Knew that feeling, he did. "Best falafel in the sector, but I doubt we're going to make it to dinner at this rate."

Jack grabbed Mickey's arm, nearly unbalancing him, and dragged him just inside a small shop. It smelled like a bakery, and Mickey swallowed against the nausea the scent of freshly-baked bread produced. The "unfriendly pharmacology" the Doctor said was in his bloodstream was running its course, and between that and the knock on the head, he'd got all the joys of a hangover, with none of the fun of being drunk beforehand. He'd hardly got his bearings when Jack asked the shopkeeper, "This is gonna sound a little nuts, but did you see my friend here earlier today? He's missing his wallet and the last few hours. We're trying to backtrack where he was."

The woman gave him a surprised look, placing a tray of small cakes on a table even as she studied Mickey. "With the little blonde girl, yes?"

Mickey managed not to wince--or smirk--as Jack's grip tightened on his arm. _Oh, you don't like that, do you, Captain Flash? Rose is what--half your age?_ "Yeah," he said, before Jack could say something stupid. "You didn't see which way we went, did you? I'd really like the wallet back, even if it's empty." The woman pointed. "'preciate it," Mickey said, stepping back into the street and letting Jack follow.

It got easier from there, Mickey's head hurting less and less as the three of them followed a series of Mickey-and-Rose sightings through the aisles of food and household goods. They'd bought milk here and biscuits there, and Rose had stared awhile at a dress and matching wrap all in pinks and purples before they'd gone on. The clothier's son remembered watching the blonde walk away ("I'll just bet he did," Jack muttered. The Doctor scowled and pretended not to notice), and seeing the two of them pass out through a poured-stone archway at the market's northern end.

The district beyond it was . . . not affluent. "Can't see what we'd be doin' in this neighborhood," Mickey said.

"Market was the best place to've been mugged, too," Jack said.

The Doctor grinned, which would've been ever so much more reassuring if his eyes weren't so dark when he turned them on Mickey. "You're you. If you and Rose just left the market, not through the gate you'd entered by, what would've brought you out here, 'stead of goin' back through the market to the TARDIS?"

Mickey wracked his brains. "Um. Rose. She saw somethin' and came to look. There's no stores here. What is it that always distracts you lot? Aliens? Unnatural things? People calling for help?" _Aluminum foil? Bits of string . . . ?_

The Doctor and Jack each went a different direction down the street, looking around. Mickey sighed and followed the Doctor. When they came upon a group of little girls playing a skipping game, the Doctor called out a cheerful hello. "I'm looking for a friend. Blonde girl in a blue jacket. Would've been a couple hours ago. You haven't seen her, have you?"

One of the tallest of the girls, dressed in a green dress over faded tan trousers, looked at Mickey, and then back at the Doctor. "Yeah. What's it worth to you?"

Mickey looked away from the young extortionist and waited till he caught Jack's eye, waving to the other man to join them. "I've never seen that kind of wrapper before," the girl said. "Is it really chocolate?"

Mickey looked back just in time to see the Doctor break the chocolate bar in half, unpeeling the wrapper a bit to display the candy inside. Every young eye on the street fixed on it. "Where'd you see her?" the Doctor asked.

The girl glanced at Mickey again. "With him. They went down a block and into that alley." She nodded her head in that direction.

Mickey looked at the nondescript alley entrance as Jack came up behind them. It was barely visible from where they stood. When he looked back, he saw the girl holding half the chocolate bar and giving the Doctor an annoyed look. "Did they come out the same way?" the Doctor asked.

The girl looked at her comrades, then gravely broke the chocolate into carefully even pieces. " _He_ didn't. The blonde lady did. A man was carrying her."

"She spilt her groceries," one of the younger girls piped up. "I took the bread home to Mum."

The older girl handed each child a piece of chocolate, putting the last one in her mouth. The Doctor handed her the other half of the chocolate bar. "Where did the man go? Did you see what he looked like?"

The girl folded the wrapper neatly around the remaining candy and tucked it into her pocket. "There were three of them. They went farther that way, past where we can see. They wore all the same colors, like the great households do. Dark blue, light blue, orange."

The Doctor was already headed back into the chaos of the market, with Jack close behind him. "Thank you!" Mickey said to the kids, wobbling as he turned to follow Rose's boyfriends. He hoped he could keep up--in the mood those two were in, he didn't figure they'd wait.

***

  
Rose hated galactic dating systems. She could never remember whether cups came before apples, or whether 4.9 was future or past to when she was from. She much preferred human-derived cultures, which mostly continued using centuries in the Common Era--until they reached the far future, anyway. When they didn't, unfortunately, they tended to date things by events she couldn't place. "After Landing" had to be the worst--all that told her was she was on a colony world, which she already knew, thanks, and so many different planets used it.

Kamil gave the year as 748 after the Revelation. She was afraid to ask what revelation--people who believed in revelations mostly took that kind of question a bit personally. "Means nothin' to me, sorry," she said, apologetically. Neither did the day and month (or she _assumed_ the name she couldn’t recognize was a month).

They'd left the small chamber where she woke up in favor of a common area full of fountains and plants and low couches and cushions. They made it as far as one of the couches before Rose's knees started to go out from under her. Kamil helped her to sit and called to someone for a light meal. Rose turned her head, trying to see who, but she wasn't fast enough with the world still trying to swim around her. "What kind of household did you say this is?" she tried, tucking the skirt of the blue dress she wore around her trouser-clad knees. (Why trousers if she was already wearing a dress? She searched her memory for one of the Doctor's warnings about appropriate dress for this planet, but she was as blank on that as she was on everything else since going to bed last night.)

Kamil looked startled. "Greater Glory is one of the seventeen founding households," he explained mildly. That helped her place herself, at least in a general way. If there'd been a founding, this was almost certainly a colony world. She was learning it wasn't an uncommon story for humans out among the stars: Offend somebody back home, buy up a spaceship or two, and head somewhere there wasn't any competition. "We are the Rudder of Tuleeq. Zaida and Imran head the household." He chewed his lip, a small frown on his face. "Rose, I don't know what your upbringing has been that you haven't had such basic lessons, but you're safe now. No one will harm you here, and we will find a place for you."

"Got a place already, thanks," she said. "I have to get back to the Doctor and Jack. They'll be worried." Kamil's stare lingered disapprovingly on her face, then flicked to her wrist. Rose looked down and saw bruises just at the end of her sleeve. She reached up to touch her face, reflexively, and winced as she found another one along her cheekbone. _Whatever happened,_ she thought, dryly, _I don't think I went quietly._ "This wasn't them," she said, firmly. "I may not remember what happened, but I know _that_."

"Don't protect them, dear one," a mellifluous voice said. Rose turned her head to see the kind of woman who made her feel plain and plump floating down two shallow steps, trailed by a much less elegant woman carrying a tray. "No one is worth harm done to you." She was tall and slender, with skin the color of coffee with cream and shining black hair. She, too, wore a dress over trousers, and the dress was of heavier material (Rose's was thin enough she didn't quite feel dressed, though the wrap helped with that) and patterned with vines and leaves picked out with a metallic orange thread. "These people--are they relatives? Guardians?"

The elegant woman was the voice of compassion and good sense, in a way Rose would've expected either to like or to be jealous of, especially when the subject of men came up. Instead, she found herself with a strong feeling she should never turn her back on this one, or give an inch. She raised her chin, hoping she didn't look as hung-over as she felt, and took a gamble. After all, it wasn't like she wanted to be mistaken for a native. "Husbands," she said firmly.

The woman with the tray stumbled a little, drawing a sharp look from her mistress. She placed the tray on a low table, and drew a cloth from over the top of it, revealing biscuits and cheeses and what looked suspiciously like stuffed grape leaves, in addition to a carafe of what might be wine or juice. She bowed a little and made her escape as the elegant woman seated herself beside Rose. "Zaida," Kamil said, "this is Rose. She can't be held accountable for herself right now--she was drugged with something, and has some memory loss. Rose--Zaida, daughter of Muhsin, is head of the household, along with her brother, Imran."

 _Thanks for nothing,_ Rose thought, schooling her face not to react. "I haven't lost enough to have forgotten my husbands," she said calmly. Calm was very important right now. Kamil was kind and Zaida was solicitous, but the fountains and couches and cushions were beginning to feel very much like some of the higher-security cells she'd been locked into--the kind where someone was always watching.

Zaida laid the back of one graceful hand gently along Rose's forehead. "You must still be unwell," she said gently. "No one in the northern district can afford more than one spouse. Has she had a fever, Kamil?"

Kamil shook his head. "Not that the physician reported."

"I'm not from your northern district," Rose said. "I'm not from this planet at all. I came aboard a ship, with my husbands. I remember being on the ship. Then I woke up here. They'll be worried about me."

Zaida and Kamil exchanged a concerned look before looking back at Rose. Kamil said, "If your stomach will abide it, you should eat something, Rose. It can only help to dilute any drug still in your system. I'm certain you'll be more yourself when you've eaten and drunk and rested."

Zaida smiled. "I'll leave her in your care, Kamil," she said, rising. "I just came to see how our new arrival was doing. Rose, if your husbands are missing you, I'm sure they'll come and take you home. But if there's some . . . confusion, please feel assured that you are welcome in the household of Greater Glory. No one will ask anything of you as you recover, but you are a lovely young woman and I'm quite sure my brother would approve of you as a concubine." She nodded to Kamil as Rose's mouth fell open. "Good day, both of you." Zaida swept out of the room.


	3. chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing installment of WMR and the Shadow Proclamation's SSA fic! Beta by Aibhinn, Yamx, and Robin C. Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

"That's not a house, it's a palace," Mickey said.

"Mansion," Jack contradicted, cheerfully. "Climb out a couple of palace windows, you learn to tell the difference." He raised his eyebrows suggestively. Mickey glared at him.

The Doctor ignored it. He wasn't entirely sure why the two humans were engaged in this chest-beating contest, but they'd been at it off and on since Mickey started traveling with them. They could sort it on their own time, for all of him--right now, he had a partner to rescue. "The ancestral estate of All Things for the Greater Glory of God," the Doctor intoned as Mickey stared at the elegant white stone edifice. "Tuleeq was colonized by a core group of about five thousand people, but the exodus was primarily funded by seventeen family groups who maintain economic, social, and political significance in this time. Including Greater Glory, whose family colors happen to be light blue, dark blue, and orange." According to the seventh-centennial history he'd cajoled out of a public data point, anyway.

"I'm sorry I ever belittled your screwdriver, Doc," Jack murmured. "I love a man who can get that kind of performance out of his tool . . . "

"Oi!" the Doctor and Mickey said in unison. Jack smirked. The Time Lord managed not to return the human's suspicious look, but only just. He turned back to the sprawling stone structure. It was four floors tall, the bottom composed of unrelieved stone and the upper floors perforated by a wealth of small, narrow windows.

"What's the threat?" Jack asked. "This place is built for battles."

"No battles," the Doctor said. "Native fauna. Avian predators--very common for the first century or so after settlement. Don't see 'em much on this continent any more."

"Guess we won't be peekin' in any windows for Rose," Mickey noted.

"You wouldn't want to try it, anyway," the Doctor said. "See those bushes all the way around?" He waited for Mickey to pay attention to the man-high plants with the frond-like red structures on top. "Whiptails--mutually predatory with the avians. Those aren't flowers on top--they sense heat and whip out to strike anything that gets too close. The inner surface is covered in fine thorns to draw nourishment from the native fauna. Or non-native, in our case."

Mickey's double-take made Jack smirk. "Wait--they'd _eat_ us?" Mickey asked.

The Doctor shrugged. "One wouldn't kill you. Try to wade through the whole mess, you wouldn't make it all the way to the house."

"Does anything on this planet _not_ bite?" Mickey grumbled.

"Let's find out," the Doctor said, feeling altogether more cheerful than he had since they learned Rose had been kidnapped. He passed through the wide-open metalwork gates and strode up the broad concrete path through the stand of whiptails, letting his companions trail along behind him.

***

  
Call it a mansion or call it a palace, it was a big, impressive pile of stone. Mickey trailed along behind Jack, who was about half a step behind the Doctor as they approached enormous double doors, half again as tall as any of them. Between the moat of killer plants and the doors themselves, if the entrance was meant to look imposing, it succeeded. A pair of guards in the household colors flanked the doors. They not only carried something gun-shaped on their belts, they had swords, too--some old-fashioned, curving kind. The guard on the right gave the three of them a curious look. "Whom shall I announce?" he asked.

The Doctor smiled that broad, cheerful smile Mickey'd grown to distrust, drawing what Rose had called "psychic paper" from his pocket and holding it where the guard could read it. "The Doctor, Captain Jack Harkness, and Mickey Smith, here to see the head of the household," the Doctor said. Mickey blinked, a bit surprised he'd rated a mention.

The guard nodded and spoke to empty air. "The Doctor, Captain Jack Harkness, and Mickey Smith, to see the children of Muhsin." After a minute, one of the doors opened, all on its own. The guard gestured toward it courteously. "Peace be upon you if you mean no harm to this house." The words felt formal, even made-over into English the way they were.

Mickey tried to look cool, like he'd never expected anything else and did _not_ still feel somewhere between sick and hung-over, as he followed the Doctor and Jack inside. The three of them couldn't have looked more like foreigners if the word were written across their foreheads. They weren't dressed right and didn't behave right---he only remembered the last couple hours on this world, but he'd picked that up--yet here they were, stepping on the fancy stonework floor of the wide entryway like they belonged here. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a young woman dressed in dark blue waiting for them. She gestured them graciously to a smaller door off one side. "Please, sit and take your ease. The steward is on his way."

"Thank you," the Doctor and Jack said in almost the same breath. From the Doctor, it sounded like he'd expected nothing less. From Jack, is sounded like the first step toward getting to know her. Her skin was too dark to show a blush, but her downcast eyes told their own tale.

Rose might have picked these two blokes, but she deserved better than Captain Flirt. Mickey elbowed Jack, harder than he probably needed to. Jack gave him an injured look and they followed the Doctor through the door into a small room with low couches. Jack stayed standing, an impatient look on his face, while the Doctor paced and looked around. As for Mickey, sitting down sounded awfully good, but if he got that close to the floor, he wasn't sure he'd be much good for getting up again any time soon. The headache was fading, but the feeling that he might be sick made him worry about bending over or moving around too fast.

"Good day," a man's voice said mildly. Mickey jumped and half-turned to see the bloke who'd come in behind him. "I am Basel, steward of the house of All Things for the Greater Glory of God. I understand you wish to speak to the children of Muhsin. What is your business, please?"

The Doctor took two steps, putting himself right in front of the steward. "That's between us and your heads of household."

Basel-the-steward managed to look gracious, but still annoyed. "The Rudder of Tuleeq has a great many obligations to Tuleeq's people. As such, heads of the founding households are quite busy. All business for the household of Greater Glory passes through me, so I can make certain it's appropriate for the heads of household's attention."

"Maybe you should ask them how they feel about kidnapping," Jack said, conversationally. Mickey tried not to flinch. Not that he'd ever seen Jack be subtle, but if they were wrong--if it wasn't really Rose the little girls had seen carried away, or if there were some kind of reason she was here ( _and just what kind of reason is there to bring someone into your house unconscious and leave her friend knocked out in an alleyway for the paramedics to find?_ )--there was no reason to make the bloke angry.

The steward looked blank. "What we mean to say," the Doctor inserted, "is that one of our companions was last seen being hauled away unconscious by a couple of blokes in your household colors."

"Are you accusing the household of Greater Glory of kidnapping?" The steward's voice was dark with suppressed outrage. _Oh, that's right,_ Mickey thought, _insult him. That'll help. Blokes like this never think anything could happen in their own little kingdoms that they don't know about._

"Nah," the Doctor said, calmly. "It just seems to me that, as honest and upstanding members of one of Tuleeq's founding families, your heads of household might be interested in finding out what's going on. What if someone's been going about behind their backs? Busy lot, heads of the founding households. Can't be expected to know everything that happens within their walls. But maybe they could trouble the household to see if a young woman arrived today? Name's Rose--about twenty years old, blonde hair, probably drugged with something unpleasant?"

Basel's eyes had gone as hard as the stone floor beneath his feet. He moved to one wall, touching a hand-sized panel there, and Mickey found himself listening for footsteps from the entryway--it wouldn't take the guards long to get here, and he couldn't help remembering those swords (he didn't know why those bothered him more than the guns, but they did). The steward said, "As it happens, we have a Rose here of that description. _Not_ drugged, thank you. She is a bound concubine of Imran, son of Muhsin. As a cherished member of the household of Greater Glory, her place of residence is on file in the central data grid--and I will _not_ have you harassing her or making slanderous accusations within our walls." The heavy front doors made remarkably little noise, but the guards' boots rang unmistakably on the stone floor. "The guards will see you out."

Jack stepped up beside the Doctor, glaring at the outraged steward. "We came for Rose. We're not leaving without--"

The Doctor put an arm in front of him. "Now, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation. If we could talk to her, I'm sure we can have this sorted in no time . . . "

It was more than just the two guards who came for them. Mickey was never sure how many, because he was closest to the door, and they grabbed him first.

***

  
Her head felt like someone was shoving nails into it and the nibbles of food Kamil had encouraged Rose to eat sat uneasily in her belly, but she'd felt worse. She was alive, and somewhere, Jack and the Doctor were looking for her. She wasn't quite prepared to test the prison-feeling of this place, and she couldn't stand without tilting a bit, but she could, by god, ask questions.

The common room held a dozen or more men and women of varying ages, most talking quietly with each other and pretending not to look at Rose. The attention--and the fact that they wouldn't own up to it--were disturbing. The sole exception seemed to be a woman a few years older than Rose, who sat cross-legged on a cushion at one side of the room, plucking strings on a large, angled wooden instrument that she held flat across her lap. Rose made her way unsteadily across the room toward the musician. "You play beautifully," she said, sinking gratefully to the nearest couch.

The woman glanced her way, her hands never stopping, and smiled. "Thank you," she said, quietly. "I wanted to play the _qanun_ ever since I was a little girl, even though it's not very practical." She plucked strings deftly with her picks, manipulating some of the many levers along one end with an absent-minded grace.

"Might not be practical, but it's amazing," Rose said, honestly.

The other woman cast her eyes down for a moment, still smiling. When she looked up, she said, "I'm Najya. Welcome to the harem." Rose tried to keep her surprise off her face. Her idea of a harem didn't include men. "Are you of one of the collateral lines?" Najya asked.

Rose took the opening. "My name's Rose Tyler. 'Collateral lines'?"

Najya plucked a deft run of notes from the _qanun_. "Not direct descendents, but something farther out. I'm a distant cousin--I'm very lucky to be here."

Rose blinked. "Why's it lucky? Did you always want to be a concubine or something?" She regretted the question as soon as it was out of her mouth--she'd just got someone talking to her; she didn't want to offend the other woman and have her clam up.

Najya laughed, though. "I'm not a concubine--I'm a student. And I never expected to be here. I was working to get into conservatory, but then I went and fell in love young. Shafiq and I didn't have the money for me to go to school except on scholarship, and then I got pregnant, and that was the end of that. I was happy enough raising our son and only playing for my family and friends. It would have been a good life."

"Sounds like my mum," Rose said. "She got married young, too, and then she had me, and a lot of things got put on hold."

Najya nodded, coming to the end of the piece she was playing. After a few moments of silence, she began another. "I never expected to be widowed so young."

Rose winced. "'m sorry."

Najya shook her head, her eyes a little distant. "It was three years ago. I miss him, but the living go on. I had a child and no means of support, on top of the pain of losing Shafiq. I don't know if I'd have gone to work at whatever I could do or gone home to my family, but Imran heard about my misfortune. He invited me and Tariq into the household, and when Kamil heard me play, he suggested the household sponsor me to attend conservatory."

"And did they?" Rose asked.

Najya looked over at her again, and smiled. "Yes. I finish up in two years. It's not the life I expected, but it's the life I have, and most of the time, I'm happy with it."

"I know that feelin'," Rose muttered, wishing her temples would stop throbbing.

Najya looked surprised. "But--if you were happy where you were, what brought you here?"

Rose sighed. "I wish I knew."

***

  
"You had to punch the steward?"

Jack glared at Mickey. "He accused us of slander."

"We accused him of kidnapping," Mickey pointed out.

"We're _right_ ," Jack growled.

"Steward might not have had anything to do with it, but he's hidin' something," the Doctor reflected, as they wound their way through the streets away from the police station. Not that it mattered much--they'd have the TARDIS inside Greater Glory's domain inside the hour. From there, it couldn't be too much trouble to locate Rose and get out again. They could even pop forward a few years for lunch, if anybody was still in the mood for falafel.

"Yeah. Our partner," Jack said.

"Who's been in a lot worse trouble," the Doctor pointed out. "Regularly. Since the moment you met her, falling from a barrage balloon." _So why does this time bother you so much more, lad?_

"From a _what_?" Mickey asked, horrified.

Mickey-the-idiot, the Doctor thought, was really overdue to adjust to life as a time traveler. This much shock, for this long, just couldn't be good for anybody, especially not humans with only the one heart. "And we'd have had her out of there sooner if we hadn't just spent five hours payin' fines and gettin' you two registered as off-world visitors."

"Says the alien," Mickey muttered.

"The alien's got psychic paper," Jack said. He gave the Doctor a vaguely guilty look. "I know, Doctor, but the concubine thing gets to me."

The Doctor gave him a slant-wise look. "Wouldn't have thought that of you, Jack. Open-minded and all."

Jack scowled. "It's not about me, Doc. I'd worry less about Rose in jail than as a concubine. She won't necessarily talk her way out of a sticky situation, and most cultures that have legal concubinage have strong penalties for concubines who knee nobles in the balls."

They rounded another corner. "She should be perfectly safe in the daytime, Jack. Heads of the founding households have duties. Day jobs. Busy folk, and all that. Besides, those kids saw Rose taken away unconscious, which means drugged--probably with the same stuff as Mickey. No need to use somethin' different. And if she feels anythin' like he does right now, nobody's goin' to send her to anybody's bed tonight."

"She might puke on them," Mickey agreed. He'd almost stopped weaving when he walked, but he still sounded miserable whenever he wasn't too busy sounding angry at Jack.

The Doctor stepped into the alley between a cobbler's shop and a candy store and stopped so fast Jack bumped into him. "Hey," the human complained. The Doctor just stared while his partner's less-efficient eyes adjusted to the near-darkness of the alley. "You're kidding me," Jack groaned as he, too, spotted the empty patch of pavement in front of a skip.

The TARDIS was gone.


	4. chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by Aibhinn, Yamx, and RobinC. Extra-special thanks to Robin C., who solved the problem I was tearing my hair out over. Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

"What do you mean, 'impounded'?" It wasn't quite a shout, but the Doctor's volume was high enough to impress most sapients. The constable rocked back a little in her chair, despite the unbreakable transparent barrier between her and the Time Lord. _Most people_ , Jack thought, _are a little more restrained around the local constabulary when they've already been arrested once that day._ He barely managed not to smirk. _Then again, would we love him if he were "most people?"_ He put a hand on his partner's shoulder, trying to will the Doctor to enough restraint that they might actually get to the TARDIS tonight, instead of spending what was left of today trying to get out of another jail cell.

They were lucky the cobbler had seen the police box hauled away on the bed of an official lorry, or they'd still be running around the twilit city looking for it. And Mickey didn't run so well right now--he and the Doctor had a point about the drug's lingering effects, as much as Jack didn't want to admit it.

The Doctor visibly composed himself. "Impounded for what?"

The constable consulted her data-point. "Obstructing a public resource," she said.

"The dumpster," Jack said. He could have laughed, except the timing was so damn unfunny. "We landed in front of a skip. I swear, I've served in military outfits with fewer rules and less red tape than they've got around here."

He could feel the tension in the Doctor's shoulder, but the Time Lord kept it contained. Jack imagined the Oncoming Storm look would get them through the poor cop who'd drawn the desk shift this evening, no problem. But with one arrest already on file, each step out-of-bounds after that was likely to get harder. "Right," the Doctor said darkly. "Impounded. Where is it?"

The constable looked away from him, touching a few spots on the data-point. "The impound opens at eight o'clock in the morning. You can pay the fine there and collect your property." A slot in the desk extruded a slip of paper. "This has the property number, the location of the impound, and the amount of the fine." She passed the paper through the few open centimeters beneath the barrier. The Doctor picked it up like it might be contagious. "Will there be anything else?"

"How do we go about getting help finding our kidnapped crewmate?" Jack asked.

The constable was unperturbed. "How long has he been missing?"

" _She's_ been gone since this morning," the Doctor said. "Spent most of the day trying to find her, but you people seem good at running us in circles."

Jack caught Mickey's very visible wince. It didn't matter much whether the Doctor was talking about the police or the entire planet: It was still the wrong tone to take with somebody who didn't have the power to make any decisions--just to stop them at the gate. "Missing persons reports can be filed after fifty-two hours. Have a pleasant evening, peace-be-upon-you," she rattled off in an utterly bored voice of endless polite repetition.

The Doctor jammed his hands in his pockets, turned on his heel, and started for the door.

***

  
The impound itself proved to be a large, warehouse-like building maybe a kilometer from the local police station. It was dull, grey brick with the same narrow slit windows used in most of the city's architecture, and very, very closed. "Door's not a problem," the Doctor said, thoughtfully, "but people don't generally keep impounded property near the door, and enough of their security systems going down will bring all the nice constables over to see what's going on in their back garden. Let's have a bit of a look around. Might be an easier way."

"I like how you're sizin' the place up, Doctor." Mickey said. "You steal things often?"

The Doctor started around the perimeter of the building without even looking at the younger human. "Once or twice," he said absently. "Saving the world, you know. Or, well, nothing anyone would miss." Mickey's mouth opened and closed several times, but nothing came out of it.

Jack smirked at the kid's discomfort. He followed the Doctor, mostly keeping a lookout for anyone who might see them skulking around the impound. The lot around the building was well-lit, but there was no one about at this time of day. _Sensible people are having their dinners,_ Jack thought. _They didn't just have their home impounded._ The back of the building joined up with a wire fence that did _not_ look built for a siege, or even aggressive predators. "Ah, now we're talking," he said, cheerfully.

Inside the fence were vehicles of all sorts, large and unwieldy items, and anything else that looked too awkward to go through a door meant for humans. The Doctor studied the arrangements as they made their way to a gate along the back of the lot. "Could go through the wire or the gate. The fence generates a bio-disruptive field, but it's not hard to disable that."

"I see the TARDIS," Mickey said, from a bit farther on. "It's wedged in between some kind of a booth and a--is that meant to be a hovercraft, or how else does it move?"

Jack walked over to look. "Hovercar," he agreed, eyes straining through some low vegetation to make out the juncture between the bottom of the vehicle and the ground. It shifted uneasily . . . but no, it wasn't the craft shifting, it was the shrubby things around it. He couldn't make out what was actually moving in the shadows near the vehicle, not with the fence lighting wrecking his night vision and the plants in the way. "Doctor, you see better than I do--can you tell what that is? It moves like it's alive."

The Doctor looked up from his inspection of the empty gatekeeper's station inside the fence. Jack pointed. The Time Lord's sharper vision fastened on the area and he muttered a few agitated syllables the TARDIS didn't translate. "Those'll be millipedes. Well, kind of. The local variant's over a foot tall and armour-plated. Mostly lives under mirror ivy, which reflects enough heat to help hide it from the whiptails."

"Wait, let me guess," Mickey said. "They bite."

The Doctor shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. The set of his shoulders did not bode well for an attempt to get the TARDIS out early. "Nah, well, not enough to bother a human. They eat bugs, mostly. But the armour's sharp enough to cut you to ribbons, and they instinctively defend against anything warm-blooded."

"Guard dogs," Jack said grimly. The Doctor's arguments that Rose wasn't in any danger tonight all made sense, but that didn't help the gnawing unease that had been playing along Jack's nerves since they learned she'd been kidnapped. "Damn, I wish the teleport on my wrist strap still worked."

Mickey stared at him. "You have a _teleport_ on that thing?"

"Had," Jack said. "Hasn't worked in years." The Doctor extended a hand to him imperiously. Jack looked at it blankly. "Not that it would've gotten us into the TARDIS, but we could have rescued Rose and gotten the TARDIS out the usual--"

"Jack," the Doctor said impatiently, "hold out your wrist."

 _Oh._ He _was_ traveling around the universe with an occasionally insufferable genius who could fix damn near anything. One he loved, even. Which didn't make it any easier to put his hand in the Doctor's. Jack had been hard-pressed to get out of the Time Agency with his wrist strap intact, and even after the teleport fried, he hadn't wanted to risk anybody else's hands on the technology. Not even hands that might help him fix it. He pushed the irrational fear away as the Time Lord pulled out his sonic screwdriver and examined the device.

The Doctor pulled a face at whatever he found. "Vortex manipulator, too, yeah?" he asked glumly.

"Yeah. The teleport was a specialized function of the VM," Jack agreed.

The Doctor turned the screwdriver off and let Jack have his wrist back. "Remember having the whole Time Vortex dragged through you?"

"Wait a minute--isn't the Vortex what we _travel_ through in the TARDIS?" Mickey asked.

"Mostly," Jack answered, letting his eyes lock on the Doctor's face. "It was a bad day."

"Could've been worse," the Doctor pointed out gently. "But that wrist strap of yours is never going to manipulate the Vortex again. Its architecture wasn't designed to channel that _level_ of energy, but that didn't stop it from trying. The whole module's fused." Jack winced. "Sorry, lad. For what it's worth, I don't see any damage to the rest of the device, but it's not going to get us to Rose."

Jack looked numbly down at his wrist. Mickey said, " _Please_ tell me we're just goin' to wait till morning, then. I like my feet fine the way they are--in one piece." The Doctor didn't answer. "Doctor, even if you can do somethin' to keep those millipedes off, if we get caught at this, we're goin' to be back in jail. Second time today, and I'm sure that'll be more than a fine this time. It'll take longer to get out and get Rose than if we just wait till morning and do this the right way."

Mickey was making sense. That had to be _some_ kind of a bad sign. "Could do," the Doctor agreed, without a lot of conviction.

This was the part where Rose was supposed to convince the Doctor to do the practical thing, only Rose wasn't here. Jack tried not to look like he was bracing himself. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at his lover. "She'll be fine, Doc," he said, hoping it didn't sound as hollow as it felt. "She'll be sleeping off the drug tonight. We'll get the TARDIS tomorrow morning, take it into Greater Glory, and have her out again before lunch. You said it yourself--she's not in any danger tonight."

The Doctor looked unhappy. "Yeah. I said it."

***

  
Great. Just great. Not only had Mickey been accused of murdering Rose when she was still his girlfriend . . . not only had they broken up . . . not only was he stuck traveling around with her and her new boyfriends in their spaceship, watching them put her in danger . . . now they'd gone and got the spaceship impounded. Which left him sharing a hostel room with the blokes on a planet that didn't exist, yet.

He was going to kill Jackie Tyler.

Now the Doctor was more-or-less glued to the room's data-point (which was just a fancy computer, as far as Mickey was concerned), muttering occasional dark bits of nonsense under his breath. He probably wouldn't sleep, Jack had said, right before the captain stretched out on one of the narrow beds without taking off anything more than his boots.

That last bit was a considerable relief to Mickey, actually, who took an identical bed on the far side of the room. In general, he mostly managed to just not think about what these blokes might be doing with Rose . . . or each other . . . but he _had_ gone around some corner in the TARDIS more than once and found the three of them wrapped around each other like eels. He'd been a little worried there might be a repeat performance, only more horizontal and minus Rose, in the room the Doctor'd badgered out of the hotelier to get that data-point access. Instead, Captain Jack was dead asleep inside of two minutes, worried about Rose or not.

Mickey wished _he_ could stop worrying about Rose. He was coming to the conclusion that those fabulous stories she'd used to tell her mum and him must have been edited. A lot. In the week or two since he'd come aboard (and wasn't it trouble, trying to keep track of time when there was no day or night on the TARDIS and the Doctor kept them bouncing from world to world like a ferret on crack?), they'd been chased by an angry mob, a trio of soldiers, and a very annoyed matron on a jet-powered tricycle; Rose had been imprisoned twice (once with him, once with the Doctor); and they were even shot at on Earth four thousand years ago (was it still shooting when it was spears propelled by a funny-looking stick? They might've been wood and stone, but anything that moved that fast could put a hole in you).

Rose seemed to love it. This was what she couldn't live without, what she'd risked her life over, taking the TARDIS back to the Doctor alone, but it made Mickey's blood run cold. He didn't ever want to have to explain to Jackie how Rose had come to harm . . . He rolled onto his side and wondered what was happening to her in that clean, white palace of a house.

Sharp wheezing sounds drew him out of his brooding. He didn't think he'd slept yet. He opened his eyes on a room lit only by the data-point. The Doctor startled out of his communion with the computer and turned his head quickly to look at Jack, who lay twitching and jerking on the bed. A faint glint from half-open eyes raised the hair on the back of Mickey's neck: Open eyes or not, but it was clear to Mickey from across the room that nobody was home in the captain's head.

The Doctor got up and walked over to crouch by Jack's bed. "Jack," the Time Lord said quietly. When the gasping sound of Jack's breathing didn't change, the Doctor laid a hand on his shoulder. Jack sat half-upright with a start, his lungs dragging in deep, heaving breaths and his eyes wide with fear. As his breathing began to slow, he lay back on the bed. "Sorry," he said in a low voice, apologizing for some nightmare dark enough to wake big, bluff, over-the-top Jack with hell in his eyes.

The Doctor touched his face. It was just a touch, but somehow, it was more intimate than the closest kiss Mickey'd stumbled across in the TARDIS's corridors. He closed his eyes, an uncomfortable intruder on the moment, but couldn't stop himself slitting them again when he heard a creak out of the furniture. He found the Doctor stretched out along the edge of the narrow bed with the other man, coat, boots, and all, and Jack clinging to him like his life depended on it.

***

  
Rose's room--the one she'd woken up in, and where she'd been told she should sleep--had wide windows looking out onto a courtyard. Not that she had much use for a courtyard, but as the day had advanced, the polarized shielding over the top had lightened. By nightfall, she had a good view of the sky. So, while she hadn't a clock, she could watch the stars move. The gravity was pretty standard here, which told her the planet was about the size of Earth. While a moon would've made it easier, she could still guess how much time was passing from the stars.

She thought a couple of hours passed after dark before she really felt anything like right. She could run now, anyway. The Doctor could say what he wanted about wandering off--as far as Rose was concerned, rule number one for traveling with him was "Always be able to run." Which was good enough for her right now. She'd had enough of people being nice to her and concerned about her health and generally useless. She'd take a life-or-death crisis any day.

The common room was almost dark as she slipped into it, a few safety lights glowing amber along the baseboards. She didn't see anyone else about, but it was probably safer to stick to the edges of the room--less to trip over, anyway. She worked her way around to where she'd seen servants coming and going and found herself in a broad hallway. A few doors opened off of it, most of them were closed.

She was almost at a cross-hall when a tall woman in a uniform stepped out of an open doorway. "Where are you going?" the woman asked.

Rose had tried to think up some clever excuse that would ease her out of the situation if she got caught, but excuses weren't her best thing. She was going with the truth. "Home," she said, shortly. "I'm not from Tuleeq. I'm getting out of here, I'm going to find my husbands, and we're going _home_."

The woman reached out to lay a hand on her forearm. "You're not well," she said. "Let me help you back to bed . . . "

Rose twisted in the woman's grip the way Jack had taught her and ducked under her arm. There was no point in being quiet now. She ran toward the cross-hall and turned left, away from the courtyard. She couldn't hear the woman--guard?--behind her, and for a moment, she second-guessed all of it: the prison-feeling, the feeling like the guard had been watching for her . . . even her conviction that she wouldn't be allowed out the front door if she tracked down Zaida or her brother and just insisted.

A hundred feet in front of her, the corridor ended in another cross-hall and a staircase. She was almost at it when two more guards spilled out of it from the right. Tricky, but she could probably dodge two of them. She had a running start; and, as frustrating as the people in Greater Glory's household seemed to be, she didn't think they wanted to shoot her.

The muted thunder of footsteps traveled up the staircase. Another half-dozen guards appeared from below, each armed with something that looked mostly like a torch, completely blocking her exit. Rose raised her hands, showing them empty, and hoped she'd been right about them not shooting.


	5. chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BR by Aibhinn, Yamx, and Robin C. Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

Kamil didn't really feel awake, not even after an extra cup of coffee. He was too old for middle-of-the-night arguments, and not old enough to find he only slept half the hours he once had. He blinked blearily out on the courtyard balcony and shook himself a little when he heard Faarooq's voice. And not just Faarooq: Rose was unmistakably with him. That was unexpected. He'd asked Faarooq to let him know when she was awake. He hadn't expected _they'd_ come looking for _him_.

He composed himself and turned to face them as they emerged from behind a potted tree. "Good morning, Rose. Are you well?"

Rose pulled up short. "As well as I can be when I'm bein' held against my will. I was tryin' to leave. Did they shoot me with those things? Did somebody drug me again?" A step behind her, Faarooq flinched.

Kamil said, "Faarooq, if you wouldn't mind, would you ask for a breakfast tray? Do you take coffee, Rose? Tea?"

For a moment, she was going to argue with him out of sheer contrariness. Then Kamil saw the minute change in her posture--still combative, but prepared to talk. "Tea. And a free pass out the front door," she said sharply.

Kamil nodded to Faarooq, and the young concubine looked only too glad to have an excuse to absent himself. "Please, sit," Kamil offered, gesturing at the assortment of cushions. For himself, he had the only chair set out on the balcony--his knees had long since given up on floor cushions. Rose lifted her chin and remained standing. "Or not, as you like," he said mildly. "You were shot with a stunner. The guards should not have done that--a stunner is harmless to a healthy person, but you were still recovering from the drug." A point he'd made abundantly clear, and at great length, through the middle of last night. The guard who'd alerted them to Rose's run from the nursery knew enough she ought to have warned the others not to stun the young woman. "I'm glad you haven't taken any ill effects of it."

"Just another big hole in my life," she said tartly. "What's a few more hours missing on top of the ones where I was stolen from my husbands and brought here?"

Kamil studied her. In the aftermath of yesterday's ordeal, he'd been prepared to write off her talk of husbands as confusion--maybe a head injury no one had brought to his attention. But today, Rose seemed clear-headed, in control of herself, and as angry as Zaida could have managed at the same age. "Before you were here," he said, "the last thing you remembered was being at home. Where is home? Where _should_ you have been?"

"Our ship." Rose's shoulders slumped a bit. She kicked a pillow into some position she liked and sat down. "You have spaceships, yeah?"

Kamil frowned. It seemed a very strange question, but then, it was a very strange answer, too. "If you'd come through port, you should have had an identity chip. Even if someone took it from you, your gencode would be on file in Customs' computers. You're not on file."

She laughed, a sound that was more frustration and disbelief than amusement. "'s a small ship. Looks more like a capsule from the outside. We don't always come through port, and we don't make much of a blip on anybody's sensors. We'd have landed somewhere and gone out to look around. Could've been anywhere in the city."

Kamil shook his head. Such a ship was beyond anything he'd learned about as a boy, but that was a long time ago, and if he took the incredible ship as true, her story was not impossible. One thing was absolutely clear to him: Rose was no dreamer and no delicate blossom. However she had come here, this young woman did not need the protection of the harem.

Faarooq slipped in behind her--bearing the breakfast tray himself, bless him. "Do you know the channels your ship communicates on? Perhaps you can send them a message," Kamil said.

She slumped. "No," she admitted. "But I'll send one out into the clear blue sky if you let me. They're searching for me, Kamil. I know they are. If it takes twenty years, they'll find me." She gave him a very level look. "But it won't take twenty years," she promised.

***

  
"Twenty-six hours!"

Another day, another desk. Mickey didn't know how the Doctor managed in Britain--he didn't know how to queue. By the time they reached the desk at the impound, they'd wasted forty-five minutes, only to find out they couldn't get the TARDIS released after all. "I'm sorry, sir," the bloke behind the desk said, "but a public safety hold is firm. Your property was impounded at four o'clock yesterday; it will be released at four o'clock today. You can pay the fine now or when you return--I'm happy to issue a receipt to speed the pick-up later in the day." He looked down at his data-point and began keying something into it.

The Doctor didn't actually lean over the impound bloke--he just managed to loom. _Not good, not good,_ Mickey thought. _I'll bet you the last person you loomed over on this planet put a public safety hold on a police box._ The Doctor opened the wallet with his psychic paper and held it up to the bloke. "Do you _really_ want to have to explain to the head of the police that you tried to delay me? To see if a _wooden box_ was safe?"

Psychic paper, Mickey thought, worked better when the guy you were talking to was actually paying any attention. He never even looked up from his data-point. "Public safety applies to everyone equally, sir. If you'd like, you can take a seat and wait to speak with my supervisor."

"No, I think we're done here," Jack said. The Doctor wasted one more glare on the assistant at the impound desk before tucking his psychic paper away and walking back out into the street. Mickey trailed along behind. Once they were outside, Jack said, "So what's plan B, Doctor? You didn't spend half the night in front of a data-point and not learn anything. Now you've got your excuse."

The Doctor leaned back against the impound building and grinned. "Too right. Turns out, Greater Glory's estate has a back door. Let's go get better acquainted with it."

***

  
"A secret underground entrance?" Mickey said. "For a bunch of pencil pushers, that's really paranoid."

Jack shrugged, studying the little building. The Doctor grinned. "Not secret," he said. "More of a left-over. When they still needed the protection of the main house, this was the escape hatch. Certain burrowing mammals on Earth do it--why not humans?"

Mickey said, "Two legs, opposable thumbs . . . "

"Not that you can tell, sometimes," Jack said.

"Oi!" Mickey had about had it with the sharp edge of Jack's tongue, which always seemed to be aimed in his direction . . . and as soon as he decided what to do about it, not even dating Rose would keep the captain safe.

"Enough, you two," the Doctor said--like Mickey had something to do with it! "Entrance is inside the outbuilding. Car park's also underground, three to the left. The rest are houses, small shops . . . " They mostly looked all the same--not identical, but made from the same mold, somehow. The car park had a different kind of door, was all. "Servants use this entrance all the time. Even family might for daily business--it's easier for a car to pick 'em up here instead of fighting for space at the front of the house."

"Reminds me of a medieval village," Jack commented. "The castle, where everyone could shelter. The wall. And then the city outside the wall. Complete with trolley stops and schools . . . "

"No schools," the Doctor said. "Not meant to be entirely self-sufficient, but all the noble houses were country estates before the city grew up around them. Once humans drove the native wildlife back, the servants and more distant kin started moving out of the primary buildings." He nodded at a handful of kids playing some kind of game with balls and markers in the little park down the road. "The kids in that park will probably grow up into the next generation of household guards and private tutors and scullions, the way their families have been doing for generations, if they don't find some other calling."

"Right," Mickey said. "So does that make us the kitchen help or the janitors or what?" He smirked. "Oh, wait--Jack can be the entertainment."

The jibe didn't even draw a reaction of Jack, who was giving the whole set-up what Mickey thought of as his "soldier look."

"Just look like you're meant to be there," the Doctor said cheerfully. "No one'll even ask."

"We stand out a little, Doctor," Jack said quietly, but the Doctor was already headed for the building he'd identified as the "back door," and there was nothing to do but follow along after him.

"Oi, Big Ears," Mickey grumbled, "hate to be caught agreein' with Captain Flash, but if we mess this up again, it just gets harder and harder to get to Rose--"

"Who's waiting, right this minute," the Doctor said, glaring. "You can stay here if you'd rather."

Mickey and Jack shared a look, which was its own kind of terrifying. The Doctor made Mickey think of a shaken bottle of cider--like he'd just held still too long, and now that the cap was off, he was spilling out over whatever was in front of him. Whether it was a good idea or not.

The Doctor's sonic screwdriver made short work of the building's lock, and the inside was nothing but an empty space with a staircase leading down into the earth. "Looks too easy," Mickey said.

"Nah," the Doctor said. "Peaceful culture. Crime is an aberration." He started down the steps. "No native fauna to worry about anymore, so no need for alien bio-detectors--"

Mickey never knew what else he wasn't to worry about. The klaxon that went off echoed off the poured-stone of the building's walls and all but deafened them.

***

  
Jack lay on his back on the grass like he hadn't a care in the world. With his hands tucked behind his neck, his head had just enough tilt that he could keep an eye on Greater Glory's "back door" . . . upside-down.

"He was just gettin' rid of us," Mickey said, from his seat on the nearby park bench.

 _No,_ Jack thought glumly. _He was getting rid of_ you _. I was collateral damage._ They'd run like hell and regrouped about a kilometer away from the alarmed entrance. Apparently, they'd been fast enough no one laid eyes on them, because no guards had come to throw him and Mickey out of the park, yet. Jack kept a lazy smile on his face. "Nah. The Doctor's just making the best use of the resources he's got. He's good with machines--if he thinks he can cobble something together to get to the TARDIS, who'm I to argue? And let's face it: He's done holding still."

"And what kind of a resource are we?" Mickey asked.

Jack watched a pair of schoolgirls get off the trolley--their ostensible means of having ended up in this technically-public park. A fine day, a tree to laze under, a lunch counter nearby . . . why not? "I'm good with people. He's tried bluff and bluster to get inside. I might be able to sweet-talk us in."

Mickey was quiet for a couple minutes. "I'll stay here," he said abruptly. Jack tilted his head forward to see a stony look on the other man's face. "If you can find a way in, I mean. I'll just be in the way. I care more about gettin' Rose out of there than tryin' to be a hero." His voice was bitter.

 _And what do I say to that?_ Jack wondered. _Tell him it's not really like that? But it is. Until he learns how to make up his mind and_ act _, he's a liability._ "It might not be that simple--" he started.

"Shove it, Jack. She's your girlfriend, yeah, but she's still my best mate. I won't risk her."

Jack sighed and wished it _were_ that simple. He went back to watching the servants' entrance. "Look, just . . . follow my lead, okay? We might need a two-man team for this: one to be the distraction and one to go after Rose." _And damn, I wish that weren't true._ "I'll cue you, whether it's to come along or stay behind. One of the rules of a successful field operation: Don't cut off any options. Having a plan is great, when you've got the time. _We're_ looking for a target of opportunity, and we don't know what shape it'll be." A private vehicle drove slowly back through the winding streets, amongst the little houses and other outbuildings.

"Thinkin' this one's shaped a bit like a town car," Mickey observed.

Jack stretched and heaved himself to his feet. "Come on. Let's make like a couple of tourists headed back to the trolley stop."

***

  
Zaida hated Council season. The sessions were a tedious waste of time, when the votes were something one jockeyed and played for well in advance. She was fortunate Imran had more patience for them than she did, but she still had to attend some few, largely because of the other interests presenting themselves before and after a session. Imran might be good at the large view, but Zaida was the one who played people, who knew who owed whom and where the secrets were kept. It paid to stay on good terms with those who trafficked in favours.

Even if it did leave her with a quite unseemly desire to strangle something by the end of a session. She sighed and stepped out of the car as one of her bodyguards held the door for her. She needed a good swim to get her blood moving again, or perhaps a session in the salle to work off some aggression . . .

Or perhaps something like _that_. The pair of men walking toward the trolley stop were obviously outworlders. Oh, the exotic coloring could just have been outworld ancestry in the last generation or two, giving them a different look than the small pool of genetic stock that had founded Tuleeq usually produced. But they _moved_ differently, especially the taller one. He had a reckless grace that seemed ready for more action than placid, staid Tuleeq could generally provide. The car pulled away and left her an unobstructed view of them . . . and them of her. Blue eyes traveled from her face down to her feet and then, slowly, back up in an appreciative glance that no one on Tuleeq would dare cast on a scion of one of the founding households.

Zaida smiled. "You're not from around here, are you?" she called to them. Her guards waited with her, patiently. They were _her_ men and women, not the household's and not her brother's. They would never object to her whims.

The man with the blue eyes chuckled and took a couple steps her direction. "Just a couple days of shore leave," he agreed. "Enjoying the sunshine and the . . . sights. I'm Mattison," he offered.

Oh, he knew the game, Mattison did. It was as much about the adventure, the need for something new, as an attractive body and the lure of physical pleasure. "I'm Zaida," she said, leaving off her patronymic as she never would with another child of Tuleeq. "And do you like what you've seen so far, Mattison?" she asked politely.

"So far," he agreed, coming closer. "I hope to see more before our ship leaves."

And that was what made him perfect, Zaida decided. She could have a husband, or more than one, whenever she decided to do that duty to her household. She could have any number of perfectly legal concubines, and even had one or two more attractive than Mattison. But the out-worlder struck her as something no concubine and no husband she would ever take would be: an equal. She could have that thrill, enjoy her small bit of adultery . . . and then he would go away again, back to his ship. "My household is one of the seventeen founding households of Tuleeq," she said, inclining her head toward the great stone pile at the top of the hill. "Our home is over seven hundred years old and contains art from as far away as Earth. Would you like to see it?" She extended her hand.

"I'm always interested in beautiful things," Mattison agreed. _Oh, the cheek._ He reached for her hand, and then hesitated. "But I'd be leaving my friend all alone." The friend in question looked awkwardly at his own toes.

Zaida wrapped her fingers around Mattison's. "I'm sure the servants can find him some refreshment while I show you what's to be seen," she said.

Mattison drew her hand to his mouth, his eyes on hers as he brushed his lips across the back of it. "It's a tour I look forward to taking," he said.


	6. chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the author narrowly avoids a cheap gag with a bottle of sack. Beta'd by Aibhinn, Yamx, and Robin C.--mistakes are All Mine. Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

Mickey couldn't believe it. Jack didn't, apparently, think he was useless--had, in fact, gone to some trouble to get them both inside. Only Mickey'd ended up sitting in the palace kitchen with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, while Jack was off to . . .

To shag the lady of the house, unless Mickey missed his guess. Rose was going to _kill_ him.

A trio of guards brushed past him toward the back of the kitchen, while the kitchen staff bustled around, talking and joking with each other like he was invisible. _I'm livin' in a cliché. The chav gets stuck down in the kitchen with the other folks that work for a livin', while the hero's off doing more important things._ When Jack had talked about a two-man team, Mickey'd figured the distraction had to do more than sit in the kitchen and drink tea. Like--

Like seduce the lady of the house. So nobody was looking at his friend down in the kitchen who . . . _That leaves me rescuing Rose. He's out of his bleedin' mind._ Mickey found himself staring at the biscuits with his mouth hanging open as the guards went by the other way--or he assumed it was the same three, they'd shed their uniforms in favor of the trousers and long shirts men wore around here and weren't paying the least bit of attention to him.

That meant they'd changed into their street clothes. Mickey took another sip of tea and set the cup down on the table as he stood up. He headed toward the back of the kitchen like he had every right to wander around here and hoped there was a locker room or a laundry waiting for him. The uniforms had to come from somewhere, and while Mickey wasn't anything like as tall as Jack, that meant there'd probably be one he could fit. _And after all,_ he thought, one good cliché deserves another.

***

  
The worst thing about Kamil, Rose thought, was that he was genuine. It was also the best thing--the more she insisted she'd been kidnapped, the more troubled he got. He'd let her send that message (to any old public address--as long as the Doctor was actually searching local communications, the message itself would get his attention with no problem), and she thought if she waited long enough, he might eventually argue her side with whoever'd decided she ought to stay right where she was. Trouble was, she didn't plan to stay put that long.

The courtyard wasn't any good for getting outside, but the harem's balcony onto it was perfectly serviceable. Rose looked down over its edge and pulled a face. It was also about four floors up. But as exits went, this one didn't go by a nursery in a household that kept guards by the children. _I'm not any more likely to fall than if I were only one floor up,_ she told herself, _and it's not like I haven't done tougher things since I met the Doctor._ She took one more glance into the harem to make sure no one was watching and swung first one leg, and then the other, over the balcony railing.

She very determinedly didn't think about the drop below as she lowered her toes to the balcony's very edge and crouched down, sliding her hands as far down the railing's supports as she could get them before squirming her feet backwards and over the lip. The sudden strain on her shoulders and hands as her entire weight hung from her fingers was a bit nerve-wracking, but she was in no danger of falling off. The balcony below hers proved to be curtained off from whatever room it led into. She swung back and forth a few times, building up enough momentum to be sure she cleared the railing, and landed with her weight forward, thank you. When no one came to check out the resulting "thump," she looked from the curtain down to the courtyard pavers and back again.

By the time she reached the floor of the courtyard, she'd begun to think she might want to add pull-ups in the TARDIS's gym to her usual exercise program of running for her life. As she landed on the pavers, a crash from behind her made her spin on her heels. She just caught sight of a young woman in the household colors running away from a tray of shattered porcelain that might once have been teacups. _Well, at least I made it to the ground floor. Let's see what we can do about an exit._ She picked a corridor leading in the direction of the stairs she'd encountered last night. _And hope Kamil's convinced 'em not to stun me this time._

She'd made it to the second major cross-hall before she ran into a guard. The bloke stopped dead and said, "Rose!"

She'd actually gone past him half a dozen steps before the strange familiarity of his voice turned her around. She blinked at the face above the uniform. "Mickey?" She looked around, quickly, then grabbed him by the hand. "Quick, which way's out?"

Mickey pointed. She started running back that direction, tugging him along with her--it couldn't be long before the servant with the tea tray sounded an alarm or somebody noticed a door open wherever Mickey'd come in. As they jogged along, he said, "You were escaping, but you didn't know where to go?"

She laughed a little as she ran. "One thing you learn traveling with the Doctor: You won't always have any idea where you're going--sometimes, it's a matter of life and death to just pick a direction and run anyway."

"Down the stairs," Mickey said.

They pelted down the staircase. "Sub-level, right. Which way?" Rose asked.

"Left," Mickey said. "There's a tunnel to the outside. Servants' entr--"

"Stop right there!" a voice said.

Three guards with stunners stepped into their path. Rose stopped, dragging Mickey to a halt. "Do what she says," Rose told him sharply. "Those are stunners. They hit you with those and you're out for hours, not doin' anyone any good." She looked up at the guard in the lead. "Why won't you just let us go?" she asked.

The guard held up a hand and seemed to listen to something Rose couldn't hear. She made some signal to the other guards and they waited, never taking their stunners off the escaping pair. A few minutes later, she heard footsteps behind them. She turned around and found a man approaching with a pair of guards flanking him. Beside her, Mickey flinched. "You've become quite the bit of trouble, young Rose," the man said. "You won't stay here, but I can't let you go--the very idea that someone in the household of Greater Glory could have engaged in kidnapping could be infinitely damaging to our standing and reputation. Worse, you seem to have friends on the . . . " He trailed off, his eyes narrowing as he noted Mickey's face as separate from his uniform. "Outside."

Mickey sighed. Rose said, "And who're you to make those decisions? This 'Imran' I hear about but never see?" She heard the trio of guards making their way up close behind her.

"Basel, steward of the household of Greater Glory. And how did _he_ get in here?" he asked, looking steadily at Mickey.

Something in his tone of voice made Rose think the steward wasn't talking to her. The leader of the guards behind her said, "I have a report that he was let in through the kitchens with another outworlder." The woman hesitated. "A 'friend' of Zaida's."

"God protect us from Zaida's whims," Basel muttered. Rose could feel the blush spread over her face. She couldn't be entirely sure who the friend was. Really, she couldn't. But there weren't too many options, and she had a feeling she could save herself time by just sinking through the floor right now and not waiting to see. "Put them in one of the cells," the steward said. "And someone go retrieve Zaida's . . . companion." His mouth twisted in a harsh smile. "You can draw lots to see who has to do it."

***

  
"Countergrav" was one of those appalling instances where most human cultures tried to render an entire range of unrelated technologies with similar effects through a single, nebulous English-derived loan-word. The Time Lords, with their basal understanding of the interplay of dimensions involved in gravity, had enough words relating it that they could have written whole sonnets to "countergrav," had they been inclined to the poetic forms of lesser species. Even the natives of Vacarii Delta, with its primary, three great moons, and four lesser ones, had enough understanding of the forces pulling at their planet that, when they developed devices that hovered above the ground, they could describe the motive mechanisms in great detail. But no, humans mainly used "countergrav," and that was it.

The particular, primitive flavor of countergrav in use on Tuleeq in this time was a basic repulsive force capable of floating something as heavy as a hovercar--if you weren't too picky about how high it floated from trip to trip. Force without control, rather like driving a car with no steering and only the handbrake. Nonetheless, countergrav it was, which meant there were certain basic components available on the open market that a genius could assemble in far more functional ways than the cultural technology level would otherwise allow. The Doctor rather wished he could show Jack, who had the head to appreciate it, but then he'd either be building more than one device or spending an endless amount of time explaining to Mickey why there really wasn't anything simpler he could do--or, more likely, both.

He'd show Jack later.

Right now, he had the outsized device in a knapsack and the controller in his hand. No need to worry about opening the gate or cutting the fence this way--he went right over both. The bio-disruptive field didn't extend much above the top of the fence, so he could ignore that. He _did_ set off a couple of standard alarms, but they were mostly an annoyance as they wailed while the unit propelled him over to the TARDIS. Dematerializing in the middle of the impound was likely to raise a few eyebrows all on its own. Alarms hardly mattered, compared to that.

The Doctor pressed the button to invert his orientation in front of the TARDIS and worked his key upside-down. He heard a certain amount of shouting but didn't bother to look for its source as he rotated to horizontal and hovered himself right inside. A lone millipede decided to investigate the TARDIS's threshold, but a quick application of his sonic screwdriver to the TARDIS's controls caused the entire console room deck to vibrate at a frequency that convinced the poor little bugger it was safer on the outside.

With the door shut and his feet firmly on the grating, the Doctor shed the knapsack and punched in a search on the TARDIS's console. It wouldn't be any trouble at all to locate Jack's . . .

The screen went unexpectedly blank except for two words that made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end: _Bad Wolf_. "And where'd you get _this_ from?" he asked, initiating a back-trace of the message. The point of origin was right here on Tuleeq . . . a data-point somewhere in the household of Greater Glory, in fact. A broad grin split his face. "Ah, now that's more like it!" he said, and set the coordinates to materialize right beside it.

***

  
The cell itself was made of the same white stone as the building's walls, but the door was a very basic steel panel of a type Rose was more than familiar with. "Don't think you're goin' to get it open," Mickey said.

Rose shook her head. "Lock's too complicated and I'm not in the practice of picking 'em anyway--we've usually got the Doctor's screwdriver for that." Mickey goggled. She ignored it. "Hinges in good repair, too. Oh well. At least there's somethin' solid and reassurin' about bein' a prisoner in a cell, instead of a harem." She went to sit beside him on the bench.

"The steward was tellin' the truth, then?" he asked. "He told us you were a concubine. Nobody . . . hurt you, did they?"

It took her a minute to figure out the little hesitation in his voice, and when she did, she laughed. "Nobody even tried to touch me, Mickey. They were all so _nice_ , I could scream. It's so much easier to fight somebody when it feels like they're ready to fight back."

She should've been expecting the scrape of the cell door, but she wasn't. Not that it mattered--two big blokes had guns (guns instead of stunners, she saw) trained on them while a third shoved Jack inside. She never even noticed the door closing; she was halfway across the cell to him when the strong scent of wine pulled her up short and she really _looked_ at him for the first time.

He was naked to the waist and his boots were gone. So was his wrist strap, which was a bad sign, but somehow, it seemed to matter less with him standing there in just his trousers. "Rose!" he said, and took two steps toward her.

It was funny, how subjective time was. She had plenty of time to realize that, whether he'd been drinking the wine or not, it was the amount soaked into his jeans that she was smelling. His zip was up, but he hadn't quite gotten the button fastened. His lips were a bit swollen and several faint, reddish marks on his chest told a story she didn't want to hear. He had his arms out to hug her, and his face was full of relief.

She took half a step backward, herself, and slapped him.


	7. chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by Yamx and Robin C. Any mistakes are All Mine. Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

The Doctor _knew_ Tuleeq's law and social codes allowed polygyny and concubinage. Greater Glory's steward told them yesterday that Rose was a concubine, and she was unquestionably the one who sent that message. Nonetheless, the cacophony of excited voices and chaos of perfumed limbs and trailing shirts and wraps took the Doctor somewhat by surprise as he stepped out of the TARDIS.

The data-point was clearly in sight, but there was no sign of Rose. He looked around a room furnished in low couches and cushions, ignoring startled squeaks and questions aimed his direction, but he only saw one head of blond hair, and that was on a man more Jack's age than Rose's. He looked down at a young woman with a small child clinging to her leg. "'m looking for Rose," he said. "She's about your height, blond, would've only got here yesterday."

The woman nodded. "Yes. I liked her," she said.

An older woman darted up and grabbed her by the wrist. "Najya, come away! It's not safe!"

Najya shook off the well-meaning caution. "We're a bit . . . insular . . . here," she noted. "Don't let us stop you. I'd check the bottom floors--there's a rumor flying around about intruders in the house. We heard they're actually using the household cells. They haven't been used in decades."

"Thanks," the Doctor called over his shoulder, already on his way back to the console room.

He had one foot inside the TARDIS when he heard, "She said she was happy. Are you part of that?"

An unexpected grin surprised his lips, and he took a look back. "I hope so," he said.

***

  
Mickey could really have done with being somewhere else. Anywhere else. Come to that, though, that was true for _any_ time he was in a cell. At the moment, he'd have been happy inside the cell, as long as Rose and Jack were on the _outside_. It wasn't that they were arguing. It was the way they'd got beyond that, and now they _weren't_. Rose sat on the cell's bench with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs, anger simmering behind her eyes. Jack did the same inspection of the cell she'd already done while it was just her and Mickey, but she either wasn't telling him that or wasn't going to bother stopping him. Mickey eased his way off the bench and crossed to the far side of the cell. It might only be eight feet of space, but it was eight feet he'd take right now. He leaned back against the wall and tried to pretend he wasn't there.

"Are you going to tell me it's not what it looks like?" Rose said.

Jack inspected the door's hinges. "Sweetheart, if I thought that's what you wanted to hear, I'd be willing to try it. Since the truth's more complicated, I thought I'd skip straight to begging, and for that, I'd rather wait till we're out of here. It's so much more fun to be on my knees when the floor's not made of stone."

Mickey winced. Rose glared. Mickey said, "Oi, easy on the personal details, Captain Flash. Rose already looked at the door. You got any better ideas?"

Jack took a step back from the offending exit. He picked the corner of the cell farthest from both Mickey and Rose and leaned back, looking thoughtfully toward the ceiling. "Maybe. The catch is, if we do this, we won't have much time, and they've still got my wrist strap. I _really_ don't want to leave that behind.

Mickey stared at him. "You think we can get out of here and you're letting a tarted-up mobile stand in the way of that? Are you barking?"

Rose was silent--still fuming, but also not arguing with Jack. Jack tucked his hands behind the small of his back. He said, "The technology is way ahead of this time. Not something I should leave lying around." Rose looked, if possible, even more unhappy.

"It's a phone," Mickey said.

Jack glared at him. "It's a wristcomp that won't be built for a couple thousand years."

Mickey shrugged. "It's a phone. Can you track it like a phone? Futuristic GPS, or something?"

Jack shrugged. "Sure, if I had something to track it with. But I'm betting it's in their security office. We passed it on the way here."

"Was that before or after you went swimmin' in a bottle of merlot?" Rose asked, sourly.

Jack closed his eyes. "Sweetheart, if I'd had something better to hit the first guard with, I would have."

It was weird. It was like there were two Jacks in the room--the one who'd flirt even when his girlfriend was ready to kill him, pasted on over the one that was really worked up about her being made a concubine. _I wonder which one has the bad dreams?_ Mickey shook off the burst of uninvited sympathy. He said, "Got a time machine, if the Doctor ever gets it out of impound--"

" _Impound_?" Rose interrupted.

Mickey continued, "We can come back for your wrist-strap in a week, or even a year, as long as himself thinks it's important. In and out, since nobody'll be lookin' for us by then."

Jack opened his eyes and regarded Mickey with a distant sort of amusement. He said, "Mickey Smith: more than just a pretty face." Mickey glared. Rose rolled her eyes. "I knew you were brighter than the Doctor gave you credit for."

Mickey scowled. "Not sure if that was flattery, but it's still not getting us out of this cell."

Jack nodded. "Okay. Straight run out the back door, and let's hope the alarms are for people trying to break _in_ , not _out_." He straightened and held up something small and gun-like for inspection.

Mickey blinked. "Where were you hidin' that in those trousers?"

Jack leered. "And here I thought you didn't notice my trousers." Rose gave him a look that could have cut steel and the leer disappeared. "Compact laser. No good as a weapon unless you're really prepared to kill with it, but it should have _just_ enough charge to cut through the hinges." He gave Rose an unreadable look. "Rose . . . are you with me?"

Rose sighed. "Do I have a choice?" She slid to her feet as Jack looked away from her, so she never saw the look of pain on his face. It almost made him feel bad for the bloke.

***

  
Like he'd tried to tell Mickey, earlier, the trick to being where you didn't belong was simply to act like you belonged there. If someone objected, acting indignant or important could carry you through, but the Doctor'd found a distinct shortage of people willing to _listen_ long enough for that to work on Tuleeq; he planned just to avoid attracting attention. No one was watching when the TARDIS materialized in a white stone hallway. His sonic screwdriver told him Jack's wrist strap was through an open door to a small room that looked like a security office, but since Jack and Rose weren't in there, he'd worry about that on the way out. He walked on past like he'd every right, and not one of the handful of guards inside looked up.

It almost made him suspicious. Things _never_ went this smoothly for him. Then again, he'd created enough of a stir upstairs, he supposed the people who cared about these things were running about the upper floors like he'd kicked their anthill over.

He listened carefully for familiar voices, rather expecting that if Jack and Mickey were within shouting distance of each other, they'd be arguing. Before he heard any, there were footfalls pelting toward him--and not the solid stomp of guards' boots, either. He stepped to the far side of the corridor, just in case he was wrong. Rose, Jack, and Mickey ran by him in a cloud of unexpectedly vinous esters.

The Doctor didn't wait for them to notice him, he spun on his heel and joined them, brushing past Mickey to capture Rose's hand in one of his and Jack's in the other. "TARDIS is back this way. Everyone okay?" he asked, cheerfully. Neither of his partners answered. On closer inspection, it was Jack who'd encountered the unfortunate bottle of wine, and under those odors was another scent--one he didn't much care for. _Oh, lad, what have you been doing? On second thought, make that "_ who _?"_

"Rose isn't much speaking to Jack," Mickey panted. "Jack's missing his wrist-strap. Other than that, nobody's hurt."

The Doctor set his jaw. "Right, then." He wasn't terribly happy with what seemed to have happened, but he didn't have time to ask right now, and Jack was sensitive enough to twenty-first century social _mores_ that he wouldn't have set Rose off this way without a reason. The Doctor looked forward to the explanation. Which had better be good. "Corner," he warned as they passed the security office.

They turned down the cross-hall where the TARDIS was parked and pulled up short as they found it surrounded by guards in household colors. "I'm not half-tired of people on this planet gettin' between me and what's mine!" the Doctor complained.

***

  
"I'm not half-tired of people on this planet gettin' between me and what's mine!" The Doctor sounded as aggravated as she'd ever heard without his going flat-out into Oncoming Storm mode.

Footsteps behind them announced the arrival of a second group of guards. "I think it's the national pastime," Jack said.

Rose said, "And I've about had it with well-meaning people keepin' me from goin' home." She glared at the group in front of them. "Oi! Send down whoever's in charge--Zaida or the brother or whoever's really the high muckety-muck. We're leavin'. You can get out of our way."

"Can't I trust you with anything, Basel?" a familiar voice asked. Zaida pushed through the group keeping them from the TARDIS and looked them over. " _Please_ tell me we have them all."

The steward followed her, a step behind. "The three out-worlders and the concubine--"

" _Four_ out-worlders," Rose interrupted, beating out the Doctor and Jack from whatever they'd meant to say by about half a breath.

Basel ignored them all. "This is all we're aware of, Zaida."

The Doctor said, "Her name's Rose Tyler, and she's nobody's concubine." In the middle of everything else, the note in his voice still went a ways toward making her happy. "I'm the Doctor. Captain Jack Harkness and Mickey Smith." He nodded to his companions. "We're more trouble than it's worth, but we'll be perfectly happy to go our way--if you'll just get out of it."

Zaida gave the Doctor a steady look. "I will _not_ have you out there accusing my household of kidnapping, Doctor whoever-you-are. Not after all the good works we've done and the effort I've put into our reputation and political credibility. I simply won't."

"Then _help_ us," Rose said. "Let's figure out _who_ dragged me here and blame _them_."

"What else're you goin' to do?" the Doctor said. "You won't let us go and you've seen by now that you can't keep us very long. Murder seems a little much, and besides, I'm sure it creates a landslide of paperwork--you do seem to love your paperwork around here."

"Why not help them?" someone said. Rose knew the voice, but it rang with an authority that made her look around. The young man who'd brought her to Kamil this morning helped clear a path for him now. The pair passed through the guards by the TARDIS to stand beside Zaida and Basel. "We are the household of Greater Glory, Zaida. It would be unworthy to hide such a sin within our walls--let alone the sinner."

Zaida's glare softened a fraction as she looked at Kamil. "Kamil, this isn't your concern. Muhsin's children guide the household of Greater Glory. We will address this slander--"

"It is no slander, Zaida." Kamil's voice rang off the bare stone of the corridor in a way that made Rose shiver. Jack started to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she took half a step away from him. The Doctor tucked her under his arm. Jack looked at one bare, white wall.

***

  
It was years since he'd recited, but Kamil found he still had his poet's voice. Young Rose studied him warily as he said, "I have known you and your brother, daughter of Muhsin, since you were in the womb. Even the finest people retain some faults, and yours, Zaida, is arrogance. You see people as chess pieces, to move about the board at your whim." Beside him, he felt Faarooq go very still, trying to avoid Zaida's ill attention. _Just a little more,_ Kamil willed him. _You are stronger than you think you are. Bear it just a little longer._

Zaida's look was scathing. "And if I do it in the best interests of our household, Uncle, what does it matter?"

So this was what it felt like, Kamil thought, to have one's heart break. "Listen to yourself, dear one. _You_ do it. You act in your own interest, Zaida, not that of your household. The world is your chessboard, and in your arrogance, what you do _not_ know is the faces of the pawns. How did you know Rose was--" _found_ "--taken in the northern district?"

Zaida blinked, and never questioned his choice of words. Kamil waited for her to remember the conversation. She looked blank. "Someone must have mentioned it in passing."

"To Zaida, daughter of Muhsin?" Imran asked, amused. Kamil's head turned with all the others as he cast about for his great-nephew. Imran was leaning against the wall behind the group of guards blocking the out-worlders in--he must have had slipped around the corner from the kitchen, and it was no good wondering how long he'd been waiting there, listening, before he said something. "Zaida, no one troubles you with the day to day trivia of the house. Small things do not amuse you--unless they're secrets." Muhsin's children locked eyes over the heads of the intervening guards, and Zaida frowned. "And what fault do you find in me, Uncle?" Imran asked Kamil lightly.

Beside Kamil, young Faarooq shivered. "Distance, Imran," Kamil said. "But you knew that already. You see everything--but no one sees you. You stand apart from us and let others seem to run things while you appear unconcerned."

"Sounds like the folks I grew up with," the black-clad Doctor grumbled, unimpressed by the quarrels of a founding household. "Could tell you the favors it did _them_."

Imran laughed softly and walked toward Kamil. The guards parted before him, respectfully. "Fair enough," the younger man said. "Now . . . kidnapping is a serious accusation. The records certainly indicate the young woman was found drugged and injured, but there could be many reasons for that. The northern district is not a safe place."

"Tell me about it," the out-worlder in the stolen uniform said, rubbing his head as if it hurt.

"So what do you know that I don't, Kamil?" Imran asked.

The household had to be set to rights, no matter how it hurt to find the viper in their midst. If it drew Imran out of his shadows and back hallways, Kamil would hope that small benefit might someday make payment for the damage to the heart of Greater Glory. Kamil said, "That it's not the first time."


	8. chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not quite to the comfort, yet. Next chapter, I promise. Beta'd by Yamx and Robin C.--any remaining mistakes are All Mine. Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

The old man said Rose wasn't the first kidnapping. Well, that made sense--whoever'd knocked Mickey on the head and drugged both of them obviously had some practice at it. The guards stirred restlessly at the old man's accusation.

"What?" Zaida and Rose said in unison. The two glared at each other like they were angry they agreed on this one. _Or maybe on anything at all,_ Mickey thought.

The old man--Kamil--nudged the younger one beside him. "Go on, Faarooq," Kamil said. "You're one of the household of Greater Glory now, and no one will turn you out for speaking the truth. I promise."

Faarooq looked miserable and barely managed to raise his eyes to Imran and the TARDIS's crew. "They drug you," he said, quietly. Basel-the-steward flinched. "You wake up here, with kind people and easy work and a beautiful patron." Zaida stiffened. "No one shouts at me here, and I'm never hungry. It's the best thing that ever happened to me." He glanced at Rose and then looked away. "I don't know where Rose came from, but she said her husbands were searching for her." Mickey blinked. _Husbands?_ The Doctor and Jack drew in closer around her, and she didn't move away from Jack this time--she was too busy looking embarrassed. "No one would have looked for me like that," Faarooq said. "So I'm happy to have been brought here--but it's wrong to do it to _her_."

"You ungrateful little wretch!" Zaida spat. Faarooq flinched and took half a step away from her. _Concubines,_ Mickey remembered. _Was he hers?_ "He's lying, Kamil," she said. "What reason would I have to promote such a thing?"

"How did you know Rose was taken in the northern district?" Kamil repeated. "Why was one of your favorite guards on nursery duty last night? Your guards don't do _nursery duty_."

"And how does one of the men who came looking for a lost companion end up _in your bed_?" Imran asked quietly.

The pink spots already on Rose's cheeks were nothing to the way her face flamed now as she pointedly didn't look at Jack. The Doctor didn't react: not a question, not a cantankerous complaint, not a dark joke. Mickey hadn't been traveling with them long, but he was pretty sure that meant bad things for Captain Flash.

Not that the bit of courtroom telly (only with more guns!) playing out in front of them even noticed their private little soap opera. "Since when do you care what I take to my bed, brother?" If Zaida's voice were any colder, it could shatter the bloke that seemed in charge. "You never bothered to censure me, as long as I made sure the pretty girls showed up in _yours_."

"Question the guards." The steward's words were so unexpected, everyone looked at him at once. He moved away from Zaida and walked over to stand with Imran. _A rat leaving a sinking ship,_ Mickey thought. Basel said, "You'll find some few of them have been given leave to bring in pretty faces from among the poor districts."

"It was a kindness to take them out of the squalor they were living in!" Zaida said.

"And were you also 'given leave' to hide it, Basel?" Imran asked. The steward looked away. The young lord said to his sister, "Charity is also a kindness, Zaida. Why the close, personal concern with just a few? Why not at least give them a choice?"

Zaida glared at her brother and hissed, "Because I _could_. What's the point of power if you never _use_ it?"

The silence that followed was louder than her words. Faarooq backed silently toward the nearest wall and worked his way over to stand with Imran's group. "Basel," Imran said, without looking at the steward, "your family has served the household of Greater Glory for twelve generations. You will always be welcome here, and a place will be found for you. But you are barred from any further position of authority. Mercy is a virtue, but stupidity serves no one. Can you abide this decision?"

Basel took a moment to give Mickey and Jack and the Doctor a hateful glare, but he said, "Yes."

"Witnessed," Kamil said. It sounded all ceremonial, coming from him.

Imran looked at his sister again. "Zaida, your actions are a stain upon our household, but you are still part of Greater Glory. You are disinherited, but if you choose to stay in the household, your children may retain your name."

"Not sure why they'd _want_ to," Rose muttered.

Zaida gave a laugh of pure disbelief. "And do _what_ , brother? You're taking my _life_ from me, and it's worth so much more than _theirs_." Mickey stiffened as she waved a hand at him and his friends.

It was Kamil who moved close to her--closer than Mickey would have thought was wise, that was for sure, but the old man seemed unfazed by her temper. "You may stay on in the harem, Zaida--protected as a household _should_ protect those they cherish and family who have no other means."

Zaida looked ready to hit him, but didn't. She spat on the white stone floor, instead. "I'd sooner stand trial like a common criminal," she said.

Imran sighed. "So be it."

Rose said, "Suits me just fine."

***

  
The last time they'd all stood in the console room, Jack thought, they'd talked about falafel and tried to keep their feet as the TARDIS landed in an alley like any other alley on any other planet. Mickey'd asked if this was a civilized planet (he was still smarting over being chased by a group of hunters with spear-throwers) and complained about being a pack animal. Rose said they wouldn't know till they went out the door and asked if he'd rather stay in the TARDIS, and they'd all agreed to meet for lunch.

Now Jack lagged behind while Mickey trailed Rose up the TARDIS's ramp. He was wearing his boots and his wrist strap and carrying his shirt. His skin felt sticky with a dried film of the wine that had drenched him when the bottle broke. Rose stopped beside the console, not looking at anyone. "Where did they get me?" she asked, without looking behind her. "I don't remember anything." Her shoulders radiated tension through the thin dress and wrap she wore.

Jack didn't know if the tension was over the kidnapping, the concubinage, or the same assumptions that had made her slap him in that cell. As options went, he could use some others. "They got both of you, actually," he said quietly.

"Outside a market," the Doctor offered. "You and Mickey were gettin' groceries."

"Did we get 'em back here?"

"No," the Doctor said.

She stared down the corridor. It wasn't like it was the first time she'd been captured somewhere--it happened to all of them, sooner or later--and even if she hadn't been talking to him, _Mickey_ 'd relayed the fact that no one had laid a hand on her except to keep her inside the household. It left Jack with a sinking feeling that the whole not-looking thing was strictly because she didn't want to see _him_. "We'll still be needin' milk, then."

Mickey looked awkwardly around the console room, still wearing the uniform of a household guard. He hadn't done badly, overall. He hadn't actually managed a rescue, but he wasn't useless. "Right . . . I'll go make a market list or something." He edged down the corridor deeper into the TARDIS and made his getaway. He deserved better than that, but right now, Jack was sure he was ecstatic just not to be in the same room as Rose and her partners.

Rose gave herself a little shake. "I want real clothes," she said, abruptly, and started away from them.

Jack wanted to hug her till she couldn't breathe. He was so relieved she was safe, even if she hated him--and she was walking away. "Rose . . . " He took two steps after her.

She whirled and glared at him, hugging her wrap around her arms She was embarrassed, she was furious, and above all, she wasn't listening. "Don't talk to me," she said. "Not right now." It hit like a punch in the gut, but he could live with that. Furious was better than hurt. He stood stone-still and watched her go.

The Doctor's gaze was a solid weight between his shoulderblades. When he couldn't hear their partner's footsteps on the deck anymore, he asked, "Do you hate me too?" He turned to look at his lover.

In a split second, the Doctor went from that sense of looming storm clouds behind his eyes to the bright grin that hid everything. "I don't hate you, Captain. Neither does she. Got a whole lot of questions, though, and honestly, I think I'd do better hearin' the answers after you've had a shower. You smell like a boudoir under that wine."

The small part of Jack that wasn't breaking wanted to deck the Doctor, but at least the Time Lord was going to listen. Jack draped his T-shirt over his shoulder and shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked slowly down the TARDIS's main corridor and into his room. _Their_ room, where all the three of them had slept, and would again when the Doctor wound down a bit and if Rose ever forgave him. It didn't feel good right now, but where else did he have to go? The Doctor followed a few steps behind. He sat on the edge of the bed while Jack set his wrist strap and boots aside and put his clothes in the hamper. He wondered if these jeans would always smell like wine to him, even after the stains and the scent came out.

The hot water was welcome. He wanted, badly, to close his eyes and let it leech the brooding misery out of his skin, but he didn't want the Doctor to see him so wrecked. He washed his hair quickly, and sure enough, the Doctor loomed in the _en suite_ 's doorframe a few minutes later, leaning against it and regarding him with an intensity that was usually a turn-on. At the moment, it was purely uncomfortable.

"You know I didn't mean for you to go in," the Doctor said. He'd stopped wearing the grin and watched Jack with sober, puzzled eyes.

Jack felt a laugh bubbling up inside him that just didn't seem healthy and choked it back. He rubbed a flannel with soap and began to scrub as he said, "I don't always do what you want." The Doctor made a rude noise. "You meant me to baby-sit Mickey. _I_ meant to do whatever it took to get to Rose."

"I was goin' for the TARDIS." The Doctor's exasperation was plain.

Jack shrugged. "And how many times had we done that in a day? I couldn't count on it, Doctor, not when I saw an opening and I didn't know how long it was really going to take you. Just because I usually _don't_ , anymore, doesn't mean I can't still run a con. If the steward hadn't recognized Mickey, we'd have been out of there before you reached us." The Doctor's eyes went dark. Jack growled a little. "This isn't a pissing match, Doc--this is about rescuing Rose. Goal achieved and we're all home alive at the end of the day--can't that be enough?"

"And she's not speakin' to you," the Doctor pointed out. Jack flinched. "You had to know how she'd take this--" He gestured vaguely at Jack's body. Jack looked down. The small marks Zaida'd left had almost faded. He found that marks did that too quickly in the last couple of months. "Twenty-first century sensibilities. What were you thinking?"

At least it sounded more like a question and less like a complaint. That didn't stop Jack from glaring. " _What was I thinking?_ Twenty-first century sensibilities, Doctor! 'Harem' was not going to go over well, and 'concubine' was worse. She wasn't in any danger while she was sick, but I wasn't risking one minute after that that I didn't have to. Not if I saw a chance. Mickey agreed. Sorry you got there late."

The Doctor's face went blank and unreadable, and Jack hovered on the edge of wanting to take the words back, even though they were true. But he needed the Doctor to think about it, dammit. "I see," the Time Lord said. He straightened up. "Got some calibrations to do." He turned around and stepped back into the bedroom.

Jack swallowed. "Need any help?" he called.

"Nope." The leather-clad back slipped out of his line of sight. The Doctor'd be fine once he'd had a chance to cool off.

Jack hoped.


	9. chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by Yamx and Robin C. Remaining mistakes are All Mine. Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

For a moment after Rose woke up, she didn't know where she was. Well, home--she knew that immediately, the soothing sounds and soft night-lighting of the TARDIS allowing her to drift in a comfortable haze as she muddled through the rest of it. The bed was the wrong size, the duvet's surface was slick where she'd tucked it under her chin, and the wall in front of her eyes was a shade of pink she wasn't used to. Slowly, it dawned on her that she was in her own bed, in her own room: the one she barely went into, anymore, except to do her makeup now and then.

Then she remembered _why_ she was in the wrong bed, and groaned. Bloody Jack Harkness and some rescue plan that involved bonking the woman that'd got her kidnapped in the first place.

She fought off the fogginess of interrupted sleep and swung her legs out of bed. She'd actually started for the door before she realized she was naked except for her knickers. She blushed, even though there was no one around to see it. The blokes were rubbing off on her--she could've gone out the door without thinking about it and given Mickey an eyeful.

He'd got the sharp edge of her tongue when they'd run into each other in the kitchen earlier, each trying to find supper without seeing anyone else. _Don't be too hard on him, babe,_ he'd said. _Think he thought he was savin' you from a fate worse than death._ And oh, she hadn't been willing to hear that.

She popped her head and arms through an abandoned sleep shirt she found in her mostly-empty drawers and tugged it down so it covered everything it was meant to before she stepped out of her room. She stopped, suddenly, wondering what she was doing. The nagging sense of something wrong hadn't disappeared when she figured out where she was. Now it had her up in the middle of the night, with her feet aimed down the corridor like she knew where she was going.

Not knowing why she was doing something was getting to be a habit. She turned her back on wherever she'd been going and headed for the console room, instead. She found the Doctor half-under the console, scowling absently to himself. "Doctor?" she said, vaguely.

He looked over at her, the scowl disappearing. "What's wrong, Rose?" he asked, working his way out from under the console and sitting up.

"I don't know," she said, a suspicion forming in the back of her mind. "Jack?" she wondered, and then realized it wasn't really a question. She sighed.

He got to his feet. "How do you know?"

She gave him a dirty look and started back down the main corridor. She was really growing to hate that question--it never had a good answer. She let her feet take her where they wanted this time, the Doctor trailing her to their bedroom door. She stopped. "'m still angry with him," she said. The Doctor made a non-committal noise. She looked at him. "Aren't you?"

He shrugged. "Angry's not quite right," he said. "Irritated. Lots of things Jack does annoy me. Got some practice at it. You goin' to stand out here?"

She pulled a face. The trouble with one of her partners being a Time Lord was that sometimes, she didn't know if he was a little alien because he was a bloke, or because he was an alien.

She opened the door on a scene they both knew well enough. Jack lay in bed, thrashing and gasping for breath. The only unusual thing was that he was there alone, with no one to wake him out of it. She felt a little guilty about that--she was angry, but she still hated to see him suffering. She walked over to their bed, the room brightening just a little as the Doctor closed the door and followed. "Jack," she said.

Most times, his name was enough to bring him out of a nightmare. Now, Jack didn't notice. He made a strained, keening sound between gasps that she didn't recognize and didn't like at all. She sat on the bed and started to reach for him, but his expression arrested her. That wasn't fear on his face--it was despair. The increased light in the room was just enough that she could see damp spots on his cheeks where tears seeped from beneath closed eyelids. She felt her throat tighten in response as the Doctor settled on the bed behind her. He snaked an arm past hers to brush his knuckles over their partner's cheek, and when that didn't work, he shook Jack's shoulder.

Jack's eyes flew open and he half-sat up in bed, chest heaving and eyes unfocused. There was an almost palpable moment where his gaze changed and he saw them. "You're alive!" he gasped, flinging his arms around them. The sudden transition from terror to relief cut at Rose in a way that finding him in just his trousers and some hickeys hadn't.

She held him, reflexively, a split second before the Doctor did the same. "'Course we are," she said softly. "Why wouldn't we be?"

***

  
Jack shook in his partners' arms like a kid after his first combat mission. It was ridiculous. It was embarrassing. It was . . .

It was so bad, he'd apparently drawn his two irate partners through the TARDIS to wake him out of the dream. Like Rose didn't have enough reason to be furious with him. Her concerned question masked the anger, but he knew it was still there. His heart continued to race, even though he'd awakened. He'd never told them about the dreams--he'd let them assume his body just remembered suffocating. It seemed safer, somehow, like if he could just avoid that final act of surrender, maybe he wouldn't have to admit . . .

Rose was waiting, and he could feel the tension in the Doctor's lean frame, even if he couldn't see the other man's face from this angle. They loved him, even when the Doctor was being prickly and possessive and Rose was being very twenty-first century. They loved him . . . but right now, they didn't _trust_ him. He had maybe this one moment to swallow his pride and give them the truth . . . because at this point, Rose was expecting a lie and the Doctor didn't _want_ to believe him. He shuddered, weighed his options, and opened his mouth. "I dreamed you dead," he whispered. He felt them stiffen and pressed onward. "I always dream you're dead. I'm floating through that damned space station, picking through Pr'tansi corpses, and I come to the control room . . . and you're there. And worse than suffocating in front of you . . . I come back. And you're still dead." Rose looked stricken. "Sorry, sweetheart," he breathed. The Doctor rubbed the back of Jack's neck.

"Don't be sorry," Rose said. "Why didn't you tell us?" She rested her head on his shoulder. It was a question with no good answer. He curved a hand around to rest it in the small of her back. "It's been months, Jack. You're not goin' to lose us."

Jack shuddered again, and the Doctor's hand stilled at the back of his neck. Rose drew back enough to look at him, and he met her unhappy, earnest eyes. "No?" he wondered. His voice cracked uncomfortably, and he cleared his throat. "I'll do _anything_ to save you. Anything. No matter how angry it makes either of you." The words should have been a challenge, but they sounded more like a confession in the still, dim air of the bedroom that was so empty without them. The Doctor bent to kiss the vulnerable spot beneath the point of his jaw. It was forgiveness, and Jack had to fight back tears of relief.

Rose nestled against him. "Did you sleep with her?" she asked quietly.

 _Nothing as intimate as_ sleep _,_ Jack thought, but he answered the question she was really asking. "Does it matter? I _would_ have." Rose sighed. "I thought maybe I could have tied her up and gagged her, until I really saw her move. She'd studied _some_ kind of up-close-and-personal-combat, and a fight would have made too much noise. So I did what I could do to buy Mickey the time to help you get out of there. I'll take whatever opportunity I have, Rose. Always. I'm sorry."

"You didn't," Rose summarized.

Twenty-first century black-and-white. It was what she needed to hear, but it wasn't the whole truth. "I _would_ have," he repeated, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

"You could've waited," she said, unhappily. "The Doctor was getting' the TARDIS."

 _But I didn't know what was happening to you in the meantime._ "No," he said, tiredly, his mind's eye seeing her floating, limp and blue-tinted, in a space station with the gravity gone out. "I really couldn't."

She growled a bit and held him tighter. He relaxed a little. "'m going to be very angry with you, sometimes," she complained.

Jack sighed. "I know," he said, content to let them hold him between them and listen to them breathe.

After a minute, the Doctor said, "You know, lad, you can't go on like this."

"Huh?" Jack muttered.

"You're so scared of losin' us you can't sleep. And it's affectin' your judgment."

Jack tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. "Don't see that I've got much choice," he said, trying for dry humor and probably failing.

"If there wasn't a choice, he wouldn't've said somethin'," Rose pointed out. Jack bent forward to kiss the top of her head and wished he didn't have to hear whatever came next--because if he were going to like the idea, the Doctor would have brought it up long since.

"Could go in, smooth some of the rough edges," the Doctor offered quietly.

Jack flinched. "You mean into my head?"

He felt the Doctor's shrug. "Telepathic, me," he said. Jack wished he didn't believe that, but it resonated with a half-remembered myth about Time Lords and an almost-memory of light and warmth as big as time and space themselves. Rose didn't react to the Doctor's words. Either she already knew, or it didn't surprise her.

Jack swallowed. "I've had worse psychic contacts," he said, trying to keep his voice cheerful. "Trouble is, I've got this hole in my mind, too. It makes me nervous."

The Doctor said, "You trust me." It wasn't even a question, and his lover was right, damn him: He couldn't keep doing this to himself. The anxiety and the sleeplessness--sooner or later, he was going to make a mistake, and while it wouldn't be the end of the universe if it killed him, he might get his partners hurt, or somebody else around them.

"It's not about that, Doctor," Rose said.

Jack found himself smiling a little at her defence of him. "You're right, sweetheart--but so's he. Hold my hand?" His tone was light and self-mocking--because he hated to admit that this scared him, and he'd just feel better if the Doctor weren't going into his mind alone.

"Can do better than that," the Doctor said, "if you want her along."

Rose startled against him and sat back to look up at him. There was no rational reason having a twenty-year-old girl in his head should make him feel better about this, but somehow it did. "'m not sure how _I_ feel about this whole telepathy thing," Rose admitted. "I don't like the idea of someone lookin' around my mind--I can understand why you wouldn't want us lookin' around in yours."

"It's not like that," the Doctor said gently. "No way you could take in everything that ever happened in somebody else's mind all at once. Think of it like a house with lots of rooms. If a door's closed, it's not polite to go inside that room. Wouldn't be lookin' into your house at all, and Jack can imagine a door in front of anything he wants to keep private."

"Are you okay with that, Jack?" Rose asked. Her eyes were warm and deep and utterly guileless.

Jack sighed. He kissed her, then turned his head to claim one of the Doctor as well. Eventually, though, he had to let their lips part. "I think I have to be. How do we do this, Doctor?"

***

  
The Doctor lay on his side with his arms full of Jack and wished for his seventh self's psychic skill. He'd only had psychic contact with anyone once in this regeneration, and that was an emergency. Drawing the energy of the Time Vortex out of Rose through Jack had been a matter of brute force and necessity, and he hadn't had time to think about it, let alone develop a case of . . . _Performance anxiety,_ a voice that sounded very much like Jack's whispered in the back of his head.

It wasn't really Jack's, of course. They lay skin-against-skin, but Jack's mind was opaque, obscured to his cursory perception in a way that nagged at him vaguely. Rose had tugged off her sleep shirt and snuggled herself up against Jack's back. The Doctor had suggested it would be easier if they were lying close to each other (and wouldn't most of his race have been shocked at the use of so much physical contact to achieve a telepathic connection!), but it was _Rose_ who'd put herself on the outside, draping an arm over Jack's ribs. It was a protective pose, and should have looked ridiculous--a curvy, barely-adult woman of average height being physically protective of a big bloke like Jack--but somehow, it didn't.

The Doctor cupped Rose's cheek in his hand. "You're both sure about this?"

"Mmhmm," Rose said.

Jack's chuckle was strained. "As sure as I'll ever be."

That made two of them. "Remember," he said, careful to keep his voice low and soothing, "anything you don't want us to see, just picture a door in front of it."

"Just do it, Doctor," Jack said.

The Doctor sighed. He slipped his hand up Rose's face just enough to rest his fingers over her temple. He gathered her consciousness up with his, much like he'd pick a kitten up with his hands. The image must have been powerful enough she caught it on the surface of his mind, because her moment of startlement was followed by a sudden, indignant impulse that didn't need words for him to translate it as _Oi! Not a pet!_ He let her feel his apologetic smile, then closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Jack's.

He probed the peculiar un-Jack-ness where humans generally kept their telepathic potential. It wasn't so much an absence as a fuzziness, as if Jack's mind were shifted sideways, somehow. The Doctor unfocused a bit, searching for a clearer view like he'd tune an old wireless set, searching for the right frequency. Jack snapped into focus, a light shield that hinted at some kind of psychic training surrounding his mind. The Doctor touched that shield--only touched it. He wanted some sign from Jack that this really was okay, but he wasn't sure the human was even aware of him, let alone capable of that kind of conscious control. Just as he was about to give up and go forward on Jack's verbal acceptance, the shield seemed to adjust itself, shivering like jelly and disappearing before him.

Human minds, it had always seemed to the Doctor, were made up mostly of shadowed spaces their owners tried not to think about. Jack's was no exception. The Doctor's metaphor about doorways had taken root here in the form of tight corridors, unexpected turns that baffled Rose, and walls at odd angles. Many of the doorways were open, but the closed ones had some weight to them, reminding the Doctor strongly of airlocks. _Think about the nightmares, lad,_ he encouraged.

It was less like passing through a door and more like the floor dropped out from under them, the transition was so sudden. As the Doctor buffered Rose from the crazy-quilt of horrors they found themselves swimming in, the metaphor her mind used to frame it spilled over on him, and they found themselves seeing fragments of sharp-edged dream, like looking at a pane of glass fractured outward from a single point of impact. Or, no, not a pane of glass. A mirror, because every crazed shard reflected them back at themselves in some nightmare setting: death on Culabree Station as Jack had described it, an incoming attack on a distant shore not distinctive enough for the Doctor to recognize it, Rose executed on some amalgam world constructed from memory and nightmare and the Doctor dead trying to save her, a battlefield that dissolved beneath their feet . . .

So many flavors of death. And all they had in common was Jack--left behind, without his partners.


	10. chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter. Thanks once again to WMR and the Shadow Proclamation for their generous donation to the Support Stacie auction last September--I hope it was worth the wait. :)
> 
> Beta by Yamx and Robin C. Any remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just haunted by them.

Rose stared at the fragmenting mirror showing all the gruesome ways they'd died in Jack's dreams. _I knew you didn't have family,_ she thought, _but who was it you lost that destroyed you? What happened, that all you can think about now is losing_ us _?_

She had no sense that the thought went any further than the inside of her own head. She could hear the Doctor, though, his voiceless observation echoing through a chamber she couldn't quite see the edges of. _Everything dies,_ he told Jack gently. _But not right now, and not like this._ As she watched, one of the cracks in the mirror sealed itself, slowly. What was left behind wasn't flawless--the image was still warped, there--but at least it was whole.

She _reached_ for it, in some way she couldn't explain, and found the seam warm beneath her touch. She wondered if it was supposed to feel like that . . . and if it would ever be like new again, undamaged.

 _Adult sapients almost never are,_ the Doctor thought. _Not entirely. But love helps._

And that was something she could do. She felt all that loss and fear and drew it to herself, trying to wrap the sharp edges around with love.

Panic and fear washed back at her, and a guilty sense of apology. She saw Zaida's bedroom in Jack's mind's eye. Zaida still had that predatory grace that made Rose feel so inadequate, but from Jack there was just . . . nothing. No, calculation. No emotion, and certainly nothing intimate. It was just another skill for him. She caught the edge of his despair, his fear that they'd think this was all he was: calculating, maybe enjoying the ride, but not _involved_. That they wouldn't understand it was different with them.

 _Of course it's different, you ninny,_ she thought, and hoped she wasn't sniffling against the back of his neck while she wasn't paying attention to her body. The mirror was as whole as it would get. She felt the Doctor's presence and concentrated on _love-for-Jack_. After a moment, she felt the Doctor echo it back. Then his focus shifted from repairing Jack to reinforcing that moment of love, and he almost overwhelmed them both with the sheer force of it.

The fear and despair popped like a soap bubble and the mirror disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a faint shadow, like an after-image in her eyes, of a brick wall. Then that, too, was gone, and she was alone in her body again.

Jack shivered between them and they stroked his skin for a while. She found herself dozing here and there, and by the time she realized the shaking had stopped, soft, even breathing told her he was asleep. The bed shifted and she saw the Doctor get to his feet. She propped herself on one elbow. Jack made a small sound and rolled over, wrapping an arm around her waist without ever opening his eyes. She blinked.

"It's the middle of the night," the Doctor said quietly. "Go to sleep, Rose. I'll be back before you wake up."

She looked down at the heavy arm draped over her. "Not sure I have a choice," she grumbled. But she found herself smiling as she sank back into their bed.

***

  
The Doctor went back to bed not long before the time Jack and Rose would usually be up. He wanted to be there when Jack woke, just in case he had any lingering fears about what the Doctor had done to ease the dreams.

Rose stirred as the mattress moved under his weight. He stilled, wanting not to wake her, but she opened her eyes and slowly sat up on Jack's other side. She looked from him to Jack's sleeping form and back again. "How are you okay with this?" she whispered.

He frowned, settling down beside the other man and looking up at her. "With what?"

She shrugged. "Him having almost gone to bed with Zaida. _You're_ the possessive one--"

"Oi!" It was hard to sound properly indignant while you were whispering. The Doctor propped himself up on one elbow to glare. "I am _not_ possessive."

Rose smiled, amusement warming her eyes. "Are so. When we get back to the TARDIS after somebody's been flirting with me or him and the day ends with you tryin' to shag one of us through the mattress? That feels like 'possessive.'"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Says the woman who laid claim to both of us on Tuleeq. 'Husbands'?" he reminded her.

She blushed. "I didn't want to seem like I belonged there, anyway. Thought I might as well go straight to the top of the food chain."

 _And you never are quite sure what to call this business of loving two people,_ the Doctor thought.

Her smile faded. "So how're you okay with what he did, and I'm not, quite? I don't understand."

The Doctor sighed and lay back against the pillows. "Jack's never goin' to stop bein' Jack," he said gently. "Might as well get used to it. He's goin' to wind me up, same as it doesn't make me happy when I see you dancin' in a club."

"Doctor--" she began.

He cut her off. "No, that's okay, 'cos it makes _you_ happy. And Jack . . . yeah, I wish he hadn't done that, and I wish I thought there was never a chance he'd do it again." He snorted in faint amusement. "But he was tryin' to protect you, and I can't find fault with that. Now that he's likely not to worry quite so irrationally about losin' us, I feel a little better, but he's always goin' to act _for us_ , Rose." _And more importantly, for_ you _._ "You felt that. I can't argue with it, even if I want to. And at the end of the day . . . he's still _mine_. _Ours_ ," he corrected. But not in time to spare himself a raised eyebrow and a grin from his partner. He glowered in response.

She looked down at Jack, then, long enough that a very sober expression crept over her face. She reached out and dragged a fingernail in small circles and swirls very lightly over his flank, just below his ribs. He shivered under the touch, waking with a helpless snicker and a confused look. He reached, reflexively, for Rose's tickling hand, but she drew back and got up on her knees, swinging a leg across his hips to straddle him. The Doctor admired the pose and watched to see where this was going.

Jack looked up at her and blinked. She leaned forward, planting her hands on his shoulders with some force and kissing him with a ferocity they didn't usually see out of Rose. Jack's hands went around her waist, stroking the small of her back and her hips. When she drew away, the two humans stared at each other from inches apart. " _Mine_ ," she said firmly.

Jack shuddered and smiled. "Always," he said.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Key](https://archiveofourown.org/works/149938) by [firefly124](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly124/pseuds/firefly124)




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